Lady of Sherwood

by Molly Bilinski

  Robin sat in the stream and made herself as comfortable she could. Jemma, in nothing but a shift, eased Will into her arms and against her chest. He twitched at the sudden sensation, though his eyes didn’t open, and he made no sound.

  “I can’t lose him, Jemma,” Robin said softly as she sifted one hand through his hair. It stood up in half-wet spikes, and she rested her cheek against his blazing hot one. “I can’t lose him.” She struggled to get her necklace off one-handed, and she held it out to Jemma when she did. “He needs a doctor. A healer. Someone.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Please.” Her hand shook.

  Jemma took the locket. “I’ll find someone who can help. Someone we can trust.”

  Robin held him a little tighter as Jemma waded from the stream. She closed her eyes, breath coming in short, sharp gasps even as she prayed harder than she had in her entire life.

  Once the sound of Jemma gathering her things and heading back to their home clearing had faded, all Robin had left was the sound of her own heartbeat, the gentle rushing of the stream, and Will’s labored breathing. She squeezed him to her as hard as she could, as though she could hold him to life through sheer force of will.

  What could she offer God? False promises she couldn’t keep? An offer to trade her life for his? What purpose would that serve if her goal were to keep him alive so she might continue to have him in her world? God had already taken people who mattered to her without any thought or question, starting with her father and ending with her mother and the rest of the manor.

  And Marcus. Poor, sweet, innocent Marcus. The only crime he’d ever been guilty of was loving her.

  Maybe that’s it, she thought with a sob. Maybe every man I love is doomed to die.

  You can’t think like that, love, Marcus’s voice whispered in her ear. She bit her lip and buried her face in the juncture between Will’s neck and shoulder. It was almost as if Marcus was behind her.

  I have loved you in every way possible on God’s green Earth. You were, are, and always will be the Lady Archer of my heart, just as I will always be your carpenter. The ones we love never really leave us. They only make room for others to love us, too.

  She felt the sensation of lips ghosting over her upturned cheek.

  I’ll always be with you—I’m your past, but William is your future. Trust you heart. It’s never led you astray, and I doubt it ever will.

  Will stirred in her arms and turned his head, breathing out a contented sigh.

  Her bare shoulders tingled, the last fading touch of a lover tracing across her skin.

  Farewell, my lady.

  Robin hiccupped, raising her face to the burst of sun that had broken through the clouds. She stroked her fingers through Will’s hair and pressed the barest of kisses to his forehead.

  ***

  She’d never felt this way in her life, as though she were stretched so thin she would break if enough pressure were applied. Her hair hung loose and ragged around her face and over her shoulders, and she kept running her fingers over the fletchings on one of her arrows for something to occupy her hands. She stood outside the sturdiest of the cottages—other than Tuck’s—and waited for Jemma to bring the physician. Will was inside, curled on his side with his bad leg extended, covered in a blanket.

  He’d gone from too hot to too cold shortly after their dip in the stream, and Robin could practically feel Death lurking around the corner.

  You can’t have him, she thought savagely, fingers tightening on her arrow shaft. He’s not yours, and you can’t have him.

  “A little further.” Jemma’s voice floated unseen from down the path. “This way.”

  She came into view with an old woman hanging off her elbow. At least, Robin surmised it was an old woman—she looked more like a pile of breathing rags than anything else. Still, if she helped Will, Robin didn’t care what she looked like.

  “What a lovely cottage,” she cooed with delight. “And this must be your lady mistress?”

  Robin’s eyebrows rose. Jemma winced.

  “Where’s my patient?”

  “Inside,” Robin said quietly. She caught the woman’s eye and flinched. Though she was old and stooped, her eyes were bright with an almost unholy light. “Jemma…”

  “She knows what she’s doing, Robin.” Jemma’s tone was firm. “Trust me.”

  “I do. With my life.”

  “You stay out here,” the woman said when they went to follow her in.

  Robin bristled and switched her grip on the arrow. She might have done some stupid things in her life—and might yet do a great many stupid things—but she wasn’t about to leave Will alone with a stranger she didn’t trust when he wasn’t able to defend himself.

  “Of course, haelan,” Jemma said demurely, wrapping a hand around Robin’s fist and squeezing hard. “We’ll stay out here.”

  The woman chortled and disappeared into the cottage.

  She jerked away from Jemma’s hold and pitched the arrow point-first in the ground. “Where the hell did you find her?”

  “She came recommended.” Jemma crossed her arms over her chest. “Ned’s wife. Their daughter Sara got real sick a few winters ago, and the haelan helped them out.”

  “What did she ask for in return? As payment?” Robin couldn’t help but think they’d somehow gotten in over their heads on this one. A knot formed in the pit of her stomach.

  “She said the locket was all she’d need or ask for. That’s it.”

  “You’re sure?” She’d heard stories before, about women in remote villages in the hills who dabbled beyond the healing arts into something much darker. Haegtesse, they were called. Witches.

  “We sparked a bargain, and that bargain is done after today. Said she’d make the first poultice, and then tell us how to make it in case more than one is necessary.” Jemma shrugged. “Our part was handing over the locket. This is her part. Once this is done, the bargain is fulfilled.”

  The door to the cottage opened. Robin jumped and reached for her quiver, which wasn’t there. Instead, she flattened both her palms down on her thighs and waited for her heartbeat to settle again.

  “I’ve left you three pots of poultice mixture. Change it every two days. If by the third one, he’s not better, well… there are some in this world even I cannot help.” She grinned—gummy and pink, for she had no teeth—and gestured for Jemma to lead the way. “Best of luck to you, Rhiannon of Lockesly.”

  Robin shivered, and then ducked inside the cottage as soon as the crone’s back was turned. She found Will much the same as earlier, though his color was improved. The poultice around his leg had a stench that made her stomach flip, though she ignored it in favor of settling next to him. He seemed to be resting better.

  Cautiously, she reached out her hand, and then wrapped her fingers around his cooler ones. She stayed just like that until Much came to get her for dinner.

  She won’t last more than a few minutes once she perches somewhere and gets comfortable, Jemma mused with a smile. She watched Robin stumble over to her side of the fire and flop down at her feet, back pressed against the log Jemma sat on. Robin, with her hood pulled up, wrapped an arm around Jemma’s leg, rested her head on her thigh, and was breathing the deep, even breaths of the truly asleep within minutes.

  “Wow,” Kitty murmured.

  “Run herself a little ragged, has she?” Lia shook her head fondly.

  “She’d do the same for any of us, not just Will,” Much said from next to the tinker.

  “Oh, I know that. But she sometimes forgets that she is only human.” She leaned over and ruffled Much’s hair. Much swatted good-naturedly at her with a bemused huff.

  Jemma sighed. “It’s always so lovely when the children play well together, don’t you think, Tuck?”

  “May I decline to answer?” Tuck took a healthy swig from his tankard. “Because I think that’s what I ought to do. Nay, the Lord is leading me to.”

  “Do you think He really le
ads us, Tuck?” Maggie asked, both hands wrapped around her own tankard of honey mead. The rest of them had coaxed her into finally trying it, and she was holding her alcohol quite well for her first time.

  Tuck shifted on his log. “I think the Lord works in mysterious ways.”

  Elena snapped her fingers to catch Lia’s eye. She signed slowly, and then sat back with her arms over her chest when she finished.

  “That’s not an answer. That’s what you’re supposed to say, as a friar. But what do you, Tuck, as a person, think?”

  The rest of them sat up a little straighter. Jemma was half-tempted to wake Robin.

  “I think—I think we make choices every day,” Tuck said slowly. “Those choices define not only us, but also the kind of lives we intend to lead. But I also believe that God sees the path we’re on, and if it’s not where we should be, He moves us. He has a hand in our lives, whether we’d like Him to or not, and He’ll put us where we need to be.” He shrugged. “I like to think it was some mix of both that got us to where we are today. Some of our choices, and some of the good Lord’s helping hand. We’re where we’re meant to be, doing what we’re meant to do. Of that—as both a man of God and simply a man—I have no doubt.”

  A hushed quiet fell over them, each of them momentarily lost in their own speculation and contemplation. Jemma, who tried not to dwell too much on what might have been, found herself thinking what life would look like if the manor hadn’t burned. If she and Robin hadn’t been followed to Marcus’s that night. If Gisborne hadn’t killed him, and Robin hadn’t been hell-bent on revenge for it, where might they have been? Would she have helped spirit the two of them away somewhere? London, perhaps, where they could have lived out the rest of their days in anonymity?

  No, it didn’t do to dwell on what might have been. Time ticked only forward, not back.

  “Have I been asleep longer than I thought, or has Tuck moved his sermon from Sunday to Thursday?”

  “Look at you finally up and about,” Maggie said brightly as Will staggered to the nearest log and sat heavily. Much slid over to give him a little more room, and he pulled the blanket he was wrapped in tighter around himself.

  There was a chorus of “Welcome back, Will,” and “Good to see you up,” and one exceptionally cheeky, “Beat death off with a stick, did you?” from Lia.

  He croaked out a laugh. “I think it was Robin who shot him full of arrows. Where is she, anyway?”

  “Over here.” Jemma pointed to her knee. “Sound asleep.”

  “Oh.” Will fiddled with the edges of his blanket. “I-um… I wanted to tell her—tell all of you, actually—thank you.” He took a deep breath, looking at each face around the fire. “You saved me from horrible death at the hands of a right bastard and… thank you.”

  Elena snapped her fingers again.

  “Makes you want to forget you’ve ever been that close to death, doesn’t it?” Lia interpreted.

  “You’re right.” He shrugged. “But I wouldn’t have gotten a second chance. I’m heavier than you are. I would have died.”

  “Makes you think about what’s really important in life, eh, lad?” Tuck said with a sly smile and a glance at Robin.

  “Absolutely.” Shivering, he snuggled further into the blanket.

  Jemma chuckled and rested a hand on the top of Robin’s head. “I never told them the other thing that happened on the gallows, Will.”

  “What thing?” Kitty demanded.

  “What thi—oh. That.” Though it was dark, there was enough light from the fire to tell he was blushing. “I thought I was going to die, Jemma. A little bit of bravado in the face of death can surely be excused.”

  She snorted. “There’s bravado, William, and then there’s telling the Sheriff and Gisborne they don’t have nearly enough wits or bollocks between them to catch Robin Hood.”

  There was a short, stunned silence before several sets of stifled giggles broke out. Someone guffawed, and then they were all laughing. Loud enough to wake Robin, who jerked against Jemma’s leg and blinked owlishly.

  “What the hell…?” she muttered.

  “Bollocks,” barked Kitty, and that set most of them off into another round of hysterics.

  “Did you—did you really say that?” Much asked.

  “You say all sorts of things when you think you’re going to meet God at the end of a hangman’s noose. I didn’t want that arse to have the last word. And you,” he added, turning wide eyes on Robin as she climbed up on the log next to Jemma. “You looked a right sight standing there with your bow and bugle. An avenging angel warrior, you were.”

  Robin turned an interesting shade of pink, played with the end of her braid, and muttered, “I don’t know about that.”

  “A warrior princess of old, then,” Jemma said quietly. “Like Boadicea.”

  “Maybe.” She met Will’s eyes across the circle and smiled softly. “Maybe.”

  ***

  He grew stronger every day. Robin watched from a distance, careful to make sure he didn’t notice how invested she’d become. It was, apparently, one thing to openly share her feelings for him where anyone could see when he wasn’t enough in his head to notice, and quite another to do so when he was conscious and looking.

  She stifled a snort. Jemma had, on multiple occasions, called her both recklessly fearless and stupidly brave. Robin could scarcely imagine what she’d say if she knew Robin’s hesitation in making Will actively aware of her feelings stemmed from a deep-seated fear of rejection.

  Leaning aback against the wall of Tuck’s cottage, she crossed her arms over her chest. Waiting for the friar to return from tending his bees had allowed her too much free time to spend wandering about her own head. Most notably, it allowed her to think back to how many people she’d loved that she’d failed.

  Marcus. Her mother. Society’s expectations of being a woman. Her future husband, whoever and wherever he might be. She’d most surely failed him, too, at this point.

  Robin mercilessly pinched the underside of her own arm through her jacket. Her eyes watered, and she bit her lip. If Jemma were there, and privy to the inside of her head, the other girl would have slapped her.

  You haven’t failed anyone who has put faith in you beyond the faith of friendship, you twit. She could very nearly hear the words in Jemma’s voice, too. Get over yourself and do something productive instead of stewing in your juices like a cooking chicken.

  She smiled softly. What she had ever done for God to see fit to give her a friend like Jemma, she’d never know.

  “You look deep in thought,” Tuck said, a jar of honey under one arm.

  “That’s unfortunately what happens when I don’t do enough running from the Sheriff’s men.” Robin shrugged. “You have a few moments? I want to ask you about something.”

  “Of course.” He gestured her inside the cottage.

  She stood aside. As he set the jar down on the scrubbed wooden table, she shut the door. This had the potential to get ugly if she was wrong, though she didn’t think she was.

  “It’s easier to run around thieving people when you appear to be a man. Nobody looks twice at you.” Robin trailed her fingertips lightly on the tabletop, eyeing Tuck who stood on the other side of it. “It’s how we know we can move unknowingly through the streets of Nottingham. It’s how Elena knew she could move from place to place.”

  Tuck said nothing. Robin looked across the table, her expression carefully neutral.

  “I wonder who taught her that. That in this world we live in, it’s easier and safer to be a man instead of a woman. I do the same thing,” she added, touching the braids Jemma had done for her to hold her hair up and out of sight. She knew she looked like a slim-featured boy as a result, and she’d always used it to her advantage. “It’s a tough business, being a woman, most notably when you’re on the run.”

  Again, Tuck stayed silent.

  “I’ve seen you dance, Friar. You have the same grace as Will, and I don’t think it’s
because you were raised in high society. I think it’s for a different reason. You’ve let your tonsure grow, too.” She reached back and pulled one of the pins holding a braid. It let some of the others fall forward over her shoulders. She went from a delicate boy to a woman dressed in men’s clothing. “Hair’s such a funny thing. When we keep it one way, we look like someone else. And when we keep it another, well, we turn into someone else entirely.”

  Robin leaned forward with her hands on the table. “You’re no man of God because you’re no man. So, Friar Tuck, who are you really?”

  “You’re clever, I’ll give you that,” Tuck said with a sigh. “And very observant.” He pulled on the sides of his robe. The outline of bandages across his chest became clear. “Sister Mary Catherine, at your service.”

  She laughed quietly. “You—you are very good. Who else knows?”

  “Elena.” Tuck shrugged. “If Lia knows, she hasn’t said anything.”

  “The lot of us are very good at keeping secrets when we have to,” Robin said. “How long have you been…?” She waved a hand in Tuck’s general direction.

  “I left the convent—it was six years ago, this past spring, that I left,” she said. “I’ll keep those reasons to myself, if you don’t mind, but overall, I felt as though I could do more for God out here among the people, not locked away behind stone walls. This is where He is, and His deeds are done.” She sighed and tucked her hands in the folds of her robe. “God calls for us to help our fellows in any way we can. That message has always lived in my heart, the same heart that told me I could do more—do better—among the outcasts of society who need God’s grace and love more than anyone.” She smiled, meeting Robin’s eyes for the first time since they entered the cottage. “God has a hand in all our lives, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not. I left the convent because He called me to. Maybe it was He who led me first to Elena, and then later to Nottingham, to Lia, and to you. A wandering spirit, there but for the grace of God.” She shrugged.