Lady of Sherwood

by Molly Bilinski

  “Are you uncomfortable?” he asked.

  “A bit. Just—if you could—” She gave him a small smile as he obligingly slid along the seat to help her arrange herself. He touched her leg. Her head dropped back against the wall of the carriage with a thud and a noise she couldn’t quite keep contained in the back of her throat.

  “Better?” he asked, easing back onto his own seat once she’d let her expression loosen.

  “Much.” She drew herself up straight and proper. The carriage lurched forward into motion again, a steady clip along the road to Nottingham. “Don’t make a sound, and we won’t have to hurt you.”

  “Hurt me?”

  “Can’t fully draw from this angle, but it’s still sharp, and it’ll still hurt,” Robin growled, deepening her voice in an effort to disguise it. With her face concealed in the depths of her hood, and the arrowhead pressed into the man’s cheek, Jemma had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from giggling at the sight.

  “Now,” Robin said, balanced against the sway of the carriage. “Where’s your purse?”

  He made a sharp movement. Jemma tensed, heart beating faster even as Robin pushed the arrowhead so far into his cheek it looked like he ought to be bleeding.

  “Motion. She’ll get it.”

  She leaned forward, and then ran her fingers along his waist until she found the purse string. Sitting back, she opened it, whistling under her breath at the amount of coin piled in it. Jemma met Robin’s eyes, nodded, and hid the purse away somewhere on her person.

  “Not a word until you get to the gates of Nottingham.” Jemma could hear the smirk in Robin’s voice when she added, “Distance isn’t a problem—if you stop the carriage, someone’s going to have an extra feather in his cap.”

  “I will report you to the Sheriff,” he hissed.

  “Please do.”

  Cheeky, Robin. So cheeky. Jemma opened the carriage door as quietly as possible. The landscape went past at a decent clip. She vaguely remembered something about tucking and rolling from Robin’s early riding lessons on what to do in case she fell off the horse. She swallowed a snort.

  “The people of Nottingham thank you for your kindness,” Robin said. “Do come again.”

  Jemma took that as her cue, throwing herself from the moving carriage. Arms wrapped around her head, she rolled a few times, scrambled to her feet, and then darted for the cover of the trees further from the road. A muffled curse behind her informed her Robin had made her own exit—and then an arrow skimmed off the tree to Jemma’s right.

  She glared over her shoulder.

  Robin, her hood off, shrugged. “Accident,” she mouthed as she motioned for her to keep running.

  ***

  Robin searched for the ledge with her toes, and then inched along until she could feel if the window itself was open. It was. After her first try, she’d decided to simply throw herself toward it and hope for the best.

  She landed in a heap on Lia’s floor, her strung bow doing its best to choke her. Wrenching it off, she rested for a moment on her hands and knees as another cramp twisted her lower belly.

  “You walk soundlessly on rooftops, and yet can’t sneak into an open window without causing a racket,” Lia said dryly from where she leaned against the wall by the blanket-obscured corner.

  “I’ll get it. At some point.” She pushed herself to her feet and rested her bow—still strung—against her chair at the table.

  “The rumor mill was at work again today.” Lia sauntered over. “The market was buzzing with news of a fairly wealthy lesser noble who’d encountered something odd on his ride to Nottingham.”

  “Oh?” Robin eased herself onto the chair with a wince. “What kind of odd?”

  “He was robbed,” she said flatly, tossing a hunk of cheese to Robin. “By a servant girl and someone in a hood who held him at, of all things, arrow point. You don’t know anything about that, do you?”

  “Me? No. But I do know someone made a very generous donation to the Nottingham poor this afternoon.” Robin dumped the contents of the purse onto the table. “Your friend—the man of God who can be trusted—he has to have a list of those who need it most.”

  Lia sat gingerly, fingers tracing the air above the coins.

  “I need that list,” Robin said quietly. “I’ve some deliveries to make.” She pulled a small knife from the sheath in her boot and cut off a slice of cheese.

  With a carefully neutral expression, Lia retrieved a folded piece of parchment from some inner pocket on her person, and then slid it across the table. “I thought you might.”

  Robin smiled.

  “Multiple highway robberies, but still nobody knows what you look like under that damn hood.”

  Robin shrugged, arms crossed over her chest, as she looked at yet another wanted poster. None of the roads into or out of Nottingham through Sherwood Forest were safe from the Hooded Outlaw, as she had been named, though she, Jemma, and Lia had been required to get creative with some of their tricks and traps. Jemma, in particular, had practice with building snares, and that knowledge had come in use after their last robbery, and subsequent foot chase.

  “It’s better if they don’t.” She gestured to the two papers side by side. “They haven’t quite figured out that the person who killed the Sheriff’s cousin is the same one relieving nobles of their wealth in Sherwood. As long as he thinks he has two to look for, then that means he divides his forces.” She glanced at Jemma. “As long as that happens, we don’t have to be looked for by the entirety of the Sheriff’s men.”

  “Price on your head’s gone up,” Jemma murmured. “Five hundred pounds on the Hooded Outlaw, and two hundred and fifty for what happened at The Gilded Crown.”

  Robin played with the end of her simple braid with a sigh. “Not too much money, then. All things considered.” She glanced at the thinning crowd and shifted her weight, the purse of their latest unwilling donor from that morning pressed against her thigh. “I’ll be back. I need to see our tinker.”

  “I’ll take a turn around the market.” Jemma adjusted the scarf over her hair as she melted among the people.

  Robin wandered along the stalls, an extra sway in her hips when she passed a group of young men. Once their attention had turned away from her, she slipped through a gap in the stalls and kept to the shadows behind them. She bundled her skirts with one hand, hiking them up above her knee to move better, and then made her way swiftly to Lia’s stall.

  The tinker had her back to her, head and shoulders bent over something in her lap. Another patch job, if Robin wasn’t mistaken. She stayed in the shadows and waited. The moment Lia realized she wasn’t alone was also the moment two of the Sheriff’s men appeared at the counter.

  Lia straightened, back stiff with tension.

  “You’re behind on your rent, Scarlet,” one of them said. “It went up two weeks ago. The Sheriff wants his money.”

  “I received no notice the rent had gone up.” Lia’s tone was frigid.

  “Well, that’s at our discretion, ain’t it?” the other said.

  “Pay it—all of it—by next week. Or we’ll take your stall and whatever else we need to settle up.” He picked up two of the knives on display. “These’ll do for now.”

  “Give the Sheriff my regards,” Lia murmured as the two wandered away. “And you—stop lurking. It’s making me twitch.”

  “You’re getting better. It doesn’t take you half as long as it used to.” Robin, still fiddling with the end of her braid, stepped closer to Lia’s side. “They threaten you like that often, Scarlet?”

  “That was my husband’s surname, thank you.”

  “It’s a wonderful one,” she said. “Your name wasn’t on that list from your Man of God. Yet, you clearly need some of what I’m planning to give away tonight. And,” she added quickly, “if the word ‘charity’ comes out of your mouth, I’m going to punch you.”

  Lia glared at her.

  “There’s an inn, on the edge of the for
est,” Robin continued, scanning the faces in front of her for any sign of Jemma’s. She’d have taken the long way around, so they wouldn’t end up in the same place at the same time. “There’s a lesser nobleman set to arrive there tonight. Help me help him make a charitable donation to the people of Nottingham, and then take what you need to make your new rent for at least a couple of more weeks. Jemma can stay with Graham. She’ll protect him.”

  Lia put down the pot. “I’ll go with Jemma, and you stay with Graham. I trust you with the most important thing in my life.”

  “And I trust Jemma with mine,” Robin said quietly. “But I understand.”

  Humming quietly, Jemma casually strolled in front of the stall, pausing to look at what knives and tools Lia had laid out.

  “Change of plans tonight, Jem.”

  “Oh?” Jemma held up a small paring blade. “All right then.”

  ***

  Jemma was used to quiet. Robin didn’t say much when there wasn’t anything to talk about, and neither of them felt the need to fill the silence. Whereas that was comfortable, born of years of familiarity between the two of them, the silence between her and Lia was tense and frigid.

  Robin was their commonality. She both trusted and kept the trust of her and Lia. No small feat, considering Jemma had tried to extend the olive branch early on in their trip and had seemingly been rebuked. Lia either didn’t recognize it or didn’t want to accept it.

  “Do you have a plan for what to do when we get there?” Lia asked, skirt rucked up around her waist to allow her freer movement. Jemma knew she’d have gone in only her leggings if Robin hadn’t insisted she try to blend in more.

  “Part of one,” Jemma hedged. “A bit of two different ones, maybe.”

  Lia motioned impatiently with her free hand as they walked side by side down the road.

  “A distraction,” Jemma blurted. “One of us causes a distraction down in the taproom while the other finds his room and relieves him of some funds.” She side-eyed Lia in the dying light. “Or… there’s another way.”

  “Are you suggesting we seduce him?” Lia stepped behind a tree and arranged her skirts once more as the lights from the inn came into view. “Take him upstairs, have him, and when he’s asleep, rob him blind?”

  Jemma shrugged, tugging at one of her curls. “Choices are good.”

  “How, exactly, have you and Robin not been caught and hanged yet?”

  She bristled. “Despite appearances, we are actually good at this sort of shite.” She scrubbed her hands over her cheeks and blew out a frustrated breath, searching for calmness in her mind. “Otherwise, we’d be dead.”

  Lia held her hands up with a muttered, “Fine, fine—I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “I think you did.” Jemma stopped, hands on her hips, and refused to back down from her glare. “I trust Robin with my life, and she, for whatever reason in that cockeyed little head of hers, trusts you. You’re hiding something—something she knows about—and I don’t even give a damn about that. What I do give a damn about is that we’ve trusted you with our lives, the lives of our girls, and that you’ll keep your mouth shut so we don’t end up in a dirty cell somewhere waiting for the hangman.

  “Now,” she continued, drawing herself up to her full height and channeling as much of Sabine’s righteous fury as she could remember from those times when Robin had absolutely incensed her mother, “you and I are going to handle this, and it’s not going to be like one of us expects a knife in the back the moment it’s over. Do we have an understanding?”

  With her eyebrows nearly to her hairline, Lia’s expression showed nothing but shock.

  “Are we clear?” Jemma demanded.

  Lia snorted, framing Jemma’s face with strong fingers in order to keep her still enough to kiss her forehead. “That’s the girl I’ve heard about.”

  I’m gonna punch her. Someplace tender. She had to visibly rein in her temper as Lia sauntered away, still heading for the inn.

  “Are you coming, or do I have to do this alone?” Lia called over her shoulder.

  “You’re insufferable, and I’ve no idea why Robin likes you half as well as she does,” she muttered, jogging to catch up.

  “I’ll grow on you.”

  “Like a fungus, I suppose.”

  Lia made a noise that sounded more painful than mirthful, sashaying around a stumbling group of drunks to the door of the inn’s taproom.

  Jemma followed her closely, slipping into the warmth and dull brightness of the room. There were enough people to prevent them from being easily recognized or remembered, though not enough to make the space feel too enclosed. The pair of them was hardly noticed in comparison to the group clustered around one of the tables in the corner.

  They jumped at the loud whoop that filled the taproom. A rather slovenly, middle-aged man lurched his way onto the tabletop, mug held high.

  “A round for all,” he yelled. “And all on me!”

  Sound swelled as those gathered took up the cry, many raising their own cups.

  Glancing at Lia, Jemma was gratified to see her wince, even if the whispered, “Guess it’s a distraction, then,” was more than unnecessary.

  ***

  With a key to the cheapest room they could rent upstairs on the table between them, Jemma ran her finger around the rim of her cup and watched their lesser noble sink deeper and deeper into a state of drunken happiness across the scarred wooden expanse of the taproom floor.

  “He might just provide us our own distraction,” Lia muttered.

  “Did you get a look at the innkeeper’s book?” Jemma asked. “What room he’s in?”

  “No doubt the biggest and best one they have.” The tinker sat back. “Can you pick a lock?”

  “Not as quickly as you can.”

  “Keep an eye on things here, and send me a sign when he starts to head for his bed.” Lia stood and stretched, as though she were tired from travel. Swiping the key off the table for good measure, she made her way to the stairs, and then up out of sight.

  I’ll just sit here, then. Jemma smiled thinly at the serving girl who came to check on her. I’ll just sit here and wait.

  She tried to look as relaxed as possible, short of seeking it at the bottom of her own cup. The crowd across the room grew more raucous, and she wasn’t sure how long had gone by, but Lia wasn’t back yet.

  Their lesser nobleman went through another two and a half drinks before he staggered to his feet and began to amble his way toward the stairs. Jemma’s heartbeat quickened in her chest, though the set of her shoulders eased when he motioned to his guards to stay put. He didn’t feel he needed them.

  Still, Lia hadn’t returned.

  Jemma adjusted the bodice of her dress a little lower, thrust her chest out a bit, and stood so quickly he was forced to hang onto her or knock her down on his way by. She smiled coyly, hands on his arms in an effort to steady him.

  “Hello,” she murmured, looking up through her lashes. “Would you like some company tonight?”

  “Pretty thing like you?” He pawed clumsily at her waist with mead-sticky fingers. “Of course.”

  She recoiled inwardly at his breath, but allowed him to lead her to the shadowy recesses of the stairs and upward. He squeezed her rear, and her fingers curled into fists.

  Jemma let herself get backed against the door, him pressed against her as she fumbled for the doorknob. The room was unlocked, but he didn’t seem to notice. The door swung open. They stumbled in, and she had the presence of mind to make sure no one in the hall could see them.

  “Pretty little wench,” he murmured. “You look like you’ll be a good romp.” He reached for her.

  She couldn’t hear anything over the thudding of her own heartbeat in her ears, and she twitched away from him as his features went slack, eyes widening in confusion before they rolled back in his head. His body slithered to the floor.

  Lia stood behind him, a metal washbasin in one hand and a bulging purse in the
other.

  Jemma’s mouth worked, though not a sound came out.

  “We should—we should leave. Now.” The tinker set the basin gently on the floor and extended her free hand to Jemma.

  “Yes. Absolutely.” She gripped Lia’s fingers tightly with her own sweaty palm, and then stepped over the unmoving body on the floor. “We should go through the kitchen.”

  “I am a little hungry. Maybe something for the road?”

  Maybe she’s right, she thought, following the older woman down the stairs and turning the sharp right to head for the kitchen instead of the door. The noise in the taproom, though diminished slightly, was still loud enough to cover what had happened upstairs. Maybe it’s a miracle we haven’t been caught yet.

  She held her breath until they exited into the space between the inn and the accompanying stable. Though there was plenty of cool, crisp air, Jemma didn’t feel the band in her chest loosen until they were well away on the road back to Nottingham.

  Lia, munching on a hunk of bread, held the purse out to her with a sly smile.

  In some ways, the robberies got easier, but in many others, they got harder. Robin’s heart felt as if it was going to beat out of her chest as she sighted down her nocked arrow, aiming for one of the Sheriff’s men. He’d taken to assigning some of them as extra guards for nobles leaving Nottingham, and it made her planning that much more difficult.

  She breathed out and let fly, not bothering to watch as the shaft buried itself in the man’s shoulder. Behind her, Jemma—now clad in her own hood of dark green to disguise her identity—continued to charge up the slight hill and deeper in the forest. Robin pulled another arrow from her quiver, found a target, and let go. That one shrieked. She turned tail and fled, confident no one would continue to come after them.

  “We need more eyes,” Jemma said as she waited on the path for Robin to catch up.

  “That means more people.” Robin looped her bow over her shoulder.

  “It went all right with Lia and me the other night.”

  Robin took a deep, carefully measured breath. “That might—that may have been a—I’m not sure she’d do that again. It’s nothing to do with you,” she added quickly, hands up in the face of Jemma’s look, one she didn’t want to see directed at her again. “It’s…” She sighed, pushing her hood back in order for Jemma to see her face clearly. “I love you like you’re my own flesh and blood—more so, in fact—but I can’t tell you this. It’s nothing that puts us or the girls in danger, but it would—something more important than Lia’s life depends on my silence of this.”