All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages

by Saundra Mitchell

  On a branch overhanging the path, a mass of leaves and vines uncurled lithely and became a boy who dropped light-footed to the dirt, sauntered left a few paces, then right, then bowed, his deep hood shadowing his face.

  I could not see his lips move, but my heart knew his words.

  “Gentlemen,” he’d be saying, “welcome to Sherwood Forest. I am Robin, lord of the woods, prince of thieves. I noticed that your horses travel under a heavy burden. Permit my friends to lighten the load. Keep your calm and you will not be harmed.”

  As he spoke, we moved. Alan, once a cutpurse whose fingers had been removed by the Sheriff one by one till all he had left were thumbs, approached the carriage with a smile. Alix’s swordswomen put silver blades to the throats of any rider who looked apt to resist robbery. Rashida, formerly a courtier whose weapon was words, slung herself onto the driver’s seat and wheedled him for information.

  We knew our roles well. We performed them with aplomb.

  All but Will Scarlet, whose only task was to simper after Robin.

  I ground my teeth. That wasn’t me anymore. Not the cringing, lily-hearted son who so disgusted my father. Not the boy who’d tangled his limbs with those of another boy, and rolled through the crackling summer grass, and let my head fill with blue sky and bliss—then cried when a farmhand told my father, and again when my father made me watch every lash the other boy took. Forty lashes, but forty-five marks on that boy’s back—five of which were mine. As I watched him writhe I could still feel his taut muscles moving against my skin, smell the salt and sea musk of his sweat.

  My father had said, “If it happens again, I will kill him.”

  Then you may as well kill me, too, I’d screamed with my hands, stabbing my finger at my own heart.

  My father’s face did not change. Calmly, he answered, “A widower does not slay his only heir. But if I must, I will remove your manhood and marry you to a nobleman, as befits a woman.”

  That night I crept into the stable. In the last stall was my father’s prize stud, painted silver blue with moonlight. I left no letter. Months later, while scrubbing piss and ale from filthy floorboards, I spied a scrap of parchment tacked to a tavern wall:

  A Handsome Reward is offered

  for the return of a White Stallion

  belonging to the Lord of Scarlock.

  Perhaps I hadn’t given him due credit. He knew which of us held the higher value in breeding.

  My name was Scarlet now. No longer a lord, but a mere boy.

  One who loved another boy.

  Alan ducked out of the carriage and said something I couldn’t parse. Robin glanced up into the trees, seeking me. I dipped a hand into my tunic lacing and fished out the medallion: a bronze fox, tarnished with fingerprints. The symbol of Locksley. Robin’s house. One eye was missing but the other was a ruby, and this caught a stray shaft of sun, bursting into a rose of light. I whisked the medal back and forth, signaling in code: The way is clear.

  Nervously, a lordling climbed out of the carriage. A hand reached after him, slim and white—his sister, perhaps. Alan bent over that hand and kissed it, grinning. Below me, boys scattered the horses into the wood—we could not keep them; horses left tracks—while swordsgirls tied up the men-at-arms with leather scraps. Tuck, who’d abandoned his noble titles because a friar need not wed nor bed and he longed for neither, swung a heavy velvet sack, and I imagined the music it made: fine chimes of silver, dulcet bells of gold.

  The children faded into the forest, our clothes the color of leaf and bark, blending, becoming one. In moments all that remained was Robin in his hood, his face unseen.

  I had waited too long. I was supposed to retreat when the others did.

  But I never missed this part.

  Robin snatched the whip from the carriage driver. As he climbed atop the coach his cape flickered, a patchwork of leaves and flowers and fur. He looked like the forest made flesh. An avatar of the living wood. The whip cracked, coiled around a tree branch. He looped it over his forearm and leaped into the green air and, like magic, vanished. Though I’d seen this trick a hundred times, I could barely track him as he swung up into the canopy. If not for one flaxen lock of hair slipping from his hood, I’d have lost him.

  My golden boy.

  The riders stirred, loosening their bonds.

  Time long past for leaving.

  I shimmied down a chain of grass ropes, my rabbit-skin boots supple and swift. The men would mask my noise in their attempts to free themselves. I knew how loud I was by nature’s response: a startled bird winging away in a rainbow streak, a scuttle of paws kicking up dirt. Sometimes sight is a more powerful way of hearing than sound.

  Before I disappeared into the undergrowth with the others, I saw it.

  A torn parchment.

  I knelt slowly, my heart thrashing. At Scarlock Manor I had learned to read and write, the privileges of a lord. Most of the others couldn’t. Robin himself struggled. He’d ask me to read for him and then curse and ball his fists in frustration. It puzzled me.

  “Your father is a lord,” I’d signed, miming a crown, fingers to forehead like antlers. “Did he not teach you?”

  “Why would he teach me?” Robin had snapped.

  Patiently, I’d signed, “Because you are his heir. His only son.”

  Robin had stared at me, expressionless. Then, quick as a fox, he embraced me. I could not see his lips to translate, but he said something over and over against my chest, three short words. Three knives rattling between my ribs.

  My heart still trembled to think of it.

  Now in my hands was something else that shook my heart. Mud blotted the ink, obscuring words. What I could read was enough.

  “A Handsome Reward is offered,” it began, and at the bottom it ended, “Report any Sightings to the Sheriff of Nottingham.”

  * * *

  The lordling’s name was Nicholas.

  His tale had come through our usual channels: gossip in pubs, coins pressed into sweaty palms. One afternoon, rumor said, Lord Hamish had returned early from the hunt, his horse maimed, to find his son, Nick, in bed with a serving girl and a stable boy, the three tangled together like some unholy chimera.

  Lord Hamish did not possess the mercy my father did. Nick unlaced his shirt to show us the scars: crimson weals, angry and boiling in the firelight. So Robin rescued him. Contrived an invitation for Nick to court a noble daughter across the forest. On their passage through our wood, we ambushed.

  Later we would bolster the ruse: cut the finger from a cadaver, slip on Nick’s signet, courier it to his father.

  Hamish lost a son; we gained a brother.

  It set off a friendly contest, the others removing bits of armor and clothing to tell the stories of their own scars: parents who’d disowned them, whoremongers who’d betrayed them. Robin watched with a solemn face and when it came his turn, said simply, “My scars are on the inside,” and stalked out of the house.

  I followed him into the spiced dusk air. Summer waned, days shortening, sunlight deepening into poignant shades of amber and marigold. A final decaying richness before death. I tried not to read portents into it but my thoughts were cagey, feral.

  In the pocket of my breeches the fragment of parchment lay folded. It burned against my thigh like a coal.

  When Robin caught sight of me he smiled, that sly, rakish smile that had made my belly tighten the night we first met, years past, both filching eggs from an innkeeper’s hens. I’d sold the white stallion for mead and meat. Robin had stolen the horse to return to me. We raced it out of town as the watchmen chased, my chest molding to his slender back, my arms around his waist, both of us laughing.

  On a hilltop we watched the distant torches swarm madly like fireflies against the night sky. I set the horse free in the woods, and Robin’s eyes twinkled. “Come meet my brothers and sister
s,” he said, and I thought, Anything that keeps me near you.

  Years passed, but my blood still fired at his smile same as the first time.

  Robin tilted his head toward the wood. We walked into the trees, hands linked. I felt the air buzz with insect song and my body hummed in harmony. At the creek, Robin guided me to a tree stump, opened my shirt. His hands were small and elegantly formed. Water ran through them, liquid threads of mirror, like mercury.

  “You don’t have to,” I said, but he silenced me with a kiss.

  Sometimes, in a thunderstorm, a lance of white fire would spear down from heaven and split the stone heart of an ancient tree, a crack so deep it seemed to come from the core of the earth. You could feel the skin of the world tense against it.

  Robin’s kiss felt like that.

  Gently he tore his lips away and washed my neck, my chest. I shrugged the tunic off. His fingers traced the terrain of my body, each ridge and slope of muscle. They raked through the trail of hair at my belly as he kissed me again.

  “Robin,” I said aloud, and from his smirk I knew I’d moaned his name. “I found something.”

  That somber look returned. As if he already knew.

  I drew the parchment from my breeches, unfolded it. “It’s a bounty. The Sheriff is offering a reward.”

  “For who?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Lord Scarlock was wealthiest of all our fathers. The only one who could interest the Sheriff in his personal plight. It must be his bounty, and the quarry must be me.

  “It’s been years,” Robin said. “He’s let you go.”

  His eyes focused on the water beading on my chest. I could not read his tone.

  Perhaps something’s happened, I signed. Perhaps Father’s fallen ill. Realized his holdings will be picked over by his cousins, like vultures cleaning a carcass. Maybe he wants his heir back. By force.

  Robin rolled his shoulders languidly. He pulled at my belt.

  “Are you bloody listening?” I gripped both of his wrists in one hand, speaking with my mouth. “This is serious.”

  In the green-blue gloaming his face appeared delicate and fey, almost nymphish. There was a beauty to him that bordered on the unreal, a fineness that made girls heady, drunk on longing. It did the same to me, of course.

  “You’re not the one they’re looking for, Will.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.”

  I opened my mouth and again he kissed me, but this time I could not resist.

  My lips crushed against his, tasting the piney rosemary sprigs he chewed. Every muscle in me flexed to draw him closer. I pulled him down into the doe-soft grass, our legs entwined, our hands clawing at each other. Atop me he felt lean and strong, dominant. My body was wet clay to him, responding fluidly to every touch, and every touch circled toward the center, the root of the ache. When he finally grasped between my legs I thought my teeth might shatter.

  Robin pressed his cheek to mine. Blond hair spilled around us, a veil of sun.

  He whispered something.

  All I sensed was heat, lips skimming my ear. He knew I could not understand. But still he crooned to me as he unlaced my breeches, put his hands where I needed them. Made my hackles dance and my skin sing. Language is not only words. We speak with our whole bodies, with gesture and glance, with touch. We had told each other a thousand times with steady hands and the searing insides of our mouths: “You are the boy I love.”

  Now he told me again as I stared up into the night, the stars switching on, disintegrating the sky into glitter, a dark body slowly consumed with light.

  * * *

  Misgiving woke me from half sleep. I lay alone on the pallet, Robin’s bedroll cool to the touch. He’d been gone awhile.

  I tugged my pants on and padded barefoot through the camp. We never stayed in one place long—no sense making the Sheriff’s job easy. Our village was oilcloth tents and crude log lean-tos. The hideout had once been a priory; now the timber rotted, and moss bearded the fieldstone. Robin loved it: the natural reclaiming the unnatural, just like us.

  At the outskirts of camp a willowy silhouette stood in the moonlight, idly twirling a staff while he kept watch. As I neared, Tuck planted the staff to sign, Evening, Will. Can’t sleep?

  I’m looking for Robin.

  Haven’t seen him. Tuck raised a bushy brow. His eyes were bright and intelligent, but warm, too. What’s troubling you, my son?

  It was a joke: Friar Tuck, the boy who did not believe. He’d turned to the order to escape an arranged marriage, threw away his lands and legacy without a mote of faith in his heart. When I’d asked him why, he’d said, “Could you imagine wedding a woman, having children and being happy? No. For you, happiness is being with a man. For me, happiness is being among friends. Love takes many forms, Will Scarlet. If I must lie to the world to be true to my heart, then I’ll lie. I’ll cheat, I’ll steal and I’ll do it with a smile. Love is the only higher power I answer to, and my love is no less for being chaste.”

  Tuck knew the language of hands and had helped me teach the others. In the order, the brothers lived for days, weeks, months in strict silence, communicating only through signs. Quiet smoothed the ripples from the pond, he said. His mind grew calm and clear. The words he spoke with his hands took on deeper significance. An entire day would pass and the only word he’d have shared with another soul was please. Imagine the world like that, he said. Imagine if all we could share was kindness.

  I touched the paper in my pocket. I’m in trouble, Tuck. The Sheriff’s after me.

  Are you certain?

  I showed him the bounty.

  My eyes aren’t as sharp as yours, he signed, but I don’t see a name.

  His gaze flicked over my shoulder. I felt a presence, turned.

  Rashida strode into the moon-washed clearing. Her hair hung loose, a midnight cowl sweeping around her long, leonine face. Flowing white robes trailed her like silk spun from sheer moonlight. Often our expressions settled into the grooves of our strongest traits. In Robin it was mischief; in me, stubbornness. In Rashida it was pride.

  It took a moment for me to notice the torn parchment in her hand. The other half.

  “The name is right here,” she said.

  May I see it?

  Rashida smiled. A breeze snapped her robe and I pictured a cat lashing its tail. “What is it worth to you?”

  I have nothing that you don’t also have, I signed. We kept no coin for ourselves. All of our wealth was shared.

  “Don’t you?”

  She glanced at the medal on my chest, the bronze fox. Reflexively, I cupped it against my heart.

  This was a gift, I began, feeling my throat clench.

  Rashida clucked her tongue, exaggerating for my benefit. “I have no need of baubles. What I want is your post. Let me climb the tree and be Robin’s monkey.” She was still smiling. Beneath the glaze of moonlight in her eyes, they were bloodshot. Strange.

  Tuck shifted his weight. “That’s not wise, sister.”

  “Just once. That’s all I ask.”

  Done, I signed and extended my palm.

  “Trade me.”

  With utmost reluctance I unknotted the leather cord. I want it back.

  “I give you my word,” she said, and I could see the wryness curling the sounds in her mouth.

  When she left Tuck twirled his staff again, anxious. This is unlike her. Rashida has a good heart.

  I knew she did. Sometimes we found young girls in the carriages we stopped, girls with burnished nut-brown skin and sparrow bones, wearing petticoats and girdles and the face paints of highborn ladies, like dolls. Rashida would offer them refuge. Too often they refused, afraid of coarser treatment at the hands of brigands.

  Once we discovered a girl of eleven years, her belly swollen with
child, her eyes bewildered and dull. She would not leave the coach. On my watch that night I spied Rashida leaving camp. I followed her into the woods to a hollowed stump, lightning split, its edges blackened. She crawled inside and I listened to the silence in my head till she crawled out again, her face wet and streaked with dark paint like fingers of shadow.

  I knew there was goodness in her. She despised me for what I symbolized: the light-skinned men of wealth, the lords who enslaved women as playthings.

  I could not blame her. Yet those same men hated me, too.

  Tuck was saying something, but I was fixed on the paper. I tilted it into a moonbeam. There it was in iron-gall ink, a black tinged with rust as if with blood. The friar leaned over my shoulder.

  See? he signed, his tension slackening. It’s not you after all.

  But my nerves were not soothed.

  The bounty listed a description: hair the color of summer wheat, eyes the color of sun filtering through the canopy. A height that would reach my shoulder. A name.

  It was the name that made me afraid.

  “Lady Marian,” it read, “of Locksley.”

  * * *

  Weeks passed before Rashida had her turn playing hawk’s eye. It felt both like no time and all time.

  The pace of life quickened as we stocked provisions for winter, mended boots and cloaks, chopped firewood, buried caches of dried meat and nuts and berries. Not all of us would survive the cold. I wondered who we’d lose this year—it was never who you thought. Alix once coughed blood for months while Rashida sat at her bedside, dabbing her forehead with a damp poultice. Yet Alix recovered and in the spring thaw, a boy named Joren tiptoed across a frozen lagoon until it cracked, and he fell in and drowned.

  Perhaps this year it would be Nick. We bathed together in a creek and he caught me staring at his naked chest. His scars had healed fully, turned invisible. Still strong and well fed from his lordling days. He flushed as I watched him dress and it didn’t occur to me until later that he must presume lust on my behalf.

  Absurd. What I felt for Robin burned stronger than anything, even the fever that had taken my hearing.

  “I wish I was like them,” I told Tuck as we watched Alix and Rashida sharpen their swords. Their bodies moved in rhythm, one girl beginning a motion that the other completed. “Women who are lovers aren’t looked at with revulsion.”