Hooded

by H. J. Mountain

  “You were like the wind when you turned on that villain.” He smiles but his eyes hold a kind of disturbed awe. “It is strange.”

  “What?”

  “This feeling. It is like the world is trying to take you from me. First the clearing, and then this…”

  I manage to smile. It is one I have for Guy only. “I am going nowhere.”

  “Good,” he says, though his brow remains heavy.

  “Promise me you will stay safe on this search.”

  “I promise.” He stands but does not yet step away. “That is, if you promise to save a dance for me tonight.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “You hate to dance.”

  “Not always.”

  “Then yes. I promise.” The thought of it – dancing with Guy – gives me a flutter of nerves. But I cannot dwell on this now. “Guy, what of the girl? Sara?”

  “Father and I told the Sheriff everything. It is not the first happening, he said.”

  My shoulders lock together. “What do you mean?”

  Guy shakes his head. “I am told that other children, other girls, have been taken in the past.”

  I leap up and cross the room to him. “And what is the Sheriff doing?”

  He puts his hand on my wrist. “He believes it is connected to the outlaws in Sherwood. Do you remember how their leader picked Beatrice first? I wonder…”

  The idea troubles me, but I cannot put my finger on why.

  “Did he say anything else to you,” Guys asks. “Their leader.”

  Not spoken, I think. But there had been a look in his eyes when he opened my purse. When he found the lion’s-cloth. I am sure of it.

  “He said I had courage for a princess,” I mutter.

  “Mighty big of him.” Guy scowls. “Do not worry, he will face his due. They all will. Now rest.” He looks at me for a moment before he releases my wrist. “I will see you at the banquet tonight. We may speak of happier things.”

  By the window I stand as the riders take the path to the outer walls. The gates climb up. I watch them till I can do so no longer, till they are lost to the great dark mass that is Sherwood Forest. I lie on the soft bed. Try not to worry about Guy. I think through what he told me. Something about the Sheriff’s idea does not sit right. The outlaws today: they felt to me like young men. Boys even. The way they spoke. How they moved. Yet the hooded man from the clearing. The one who came for me: Vesilly…

  There had been something ancient about him, a dust-shrouded age.

  In my heart he resembles a shadow.

  *

  We prepare ourselves for the banquet: the daughters of the guests. Beatrice applies colour to my cheeks. She runs curls in my dark hair. When it is not about the boys at the dance tonight, the talk is all of our robbery in Sherwood. Beatrice is a good storyteller, never afraid to embellish. Girls cluster round. They hang on her every terrific word. In Beatrice’s telling the Green Giant becomes eight feet tall. Maroon Eyes is the devil on earth. We are lucky to have our lives.

  Perhaps she is right. Yet there are other strangers that scare me deeper.

  “Brya was like a soldier!” Beatrice says, returning to the part where I spun around my captor. “I have never seen anything like it!”

  The girls stare at me like I am some exotic creature, a captured lynx. “It was nothing,” I say, hoping they will lose interest.

  “It was most certainly something!” Beatrice grasps my hand. “You protected me. Like my sister.”

  “You are not sisters?” a slender red-haired girl asks. “You are both of the House of Gisbourne, are you not?”

  Beatrice waves a hand. “Brya is like my sister. But she is Father’s charge. We found her in the forest when she was a child.”

  Several of the girls gasp, though I am sure some of them know this story already. They examine me all over again: a child of the wood. Lowborn.

  “Will you pardon me?”

  “Don’t be long,” Beatrice says, missing my glare. “You still need me to colour your cheeks!”

  As I leave the crowded room, I hear the girls flood Beatrice with questions about me. I walk swiftly. My face feels hot. My eyes cast down to the midnight blue dress, Beatrice’s dress. Part of me wants to tear it off. Rip it into pieces and throw it from a high window. But that would be perfect for them, would it not? Proof that I am wild and wayward, a child born of the forest. Perhaps I should start howling instead.

  Interrupting my prideful thoughts is a boy sat on a bench at the end of the corridor. He has a book in his lap. His hair is black and short and tacked to the left, and when he looks up, the sharpness of his large green eyes gives me pause. He tilts his head forward: a singular nod of greeting. I want to stop. He is nearly my age, perhaps a little younger, and I am curious to know what he reads. But he turns back to the page and in the end I carry on, not wishing to disturb him. I walk on with a slight regret and the unsettling sensation of eyes watching after me.

  I come to a long room with a thick rug laid across the wooden floor. At first I think the room is empty but passing the threshold I see the back of a tall man with long silver-black hair. He is facing the wall, a large painting, but it is the man I seek.

  “Excuse me, sire.”

  He turns from the portrait of himself, in which he is stood proud and bearded, with the grin of a knowing soul. His true face is older than in the painting: fuller and redder in the cheeks. The grin remains.

  “May I speak with you, Lord Sheriff?”

  “You are one of the Gisbourne girls.” His voice is smooth as honey. Though he is not a handsome man there is an air about him that is hard to ignore. He wears his authority like a coat of fur.

  “That is right, sire. Brya.”

  He ushers me into his office. I stop in the middle of the rug, surprised that he should remember my name from the tournament last. Then his eyes run up and down my high dress.

  “A lovely gown.”

  “Thank you, sire.”

  “You have grown up, haven’t you?”

  I look away, an uncomfortable heat in my cheeks. He is more than old enough to be my father. I try to ignore the feeling, again, of being an exotic creature under inspection.

  “I wish to ask your help.”

  “Come.” The Sheriff gestures to a cushioned seat beside the window. I move there with reluctance. He stands in front of me, his hands clasped together. “Poor girl, you must be shaken. These are deeply troubling times in our land, and with the King fighting faraway, it is natural that fear should gather. But do not worry. Justice will be delivered for your family and all the other folk who have been wronged by the devils of the wood.”

  He smiles, gladdened to have soothed my fears.

  “Thank you, sire.” I swallow. “But actually I wished to speak with you about another matter. I believe my…Guy told you about what happened yesterday, the girl of our village who was taken?”

  His black eyebrows dip. “Ah yes. Sad tidings indeed. But I assure you: we will seize these outlaws. They do not dare leave the forest. Like rats they fear to wander from their filthy nests!”

  “I do not know that it was them, sire.”

  The Sheriff purses his lips. “Why do you say that, child?”

  “Because there was a man in the wood that day.” I tell him about the one in the cowl, the one I think of as Vesilly. “I believe he was the one who took her, Lord Sheriff, or he helped whoever did. He was older than the outlaws. He was different.”

  “Different? How so?”

  “I do not know exactly.”

  “You saw his face?”

  “No. It was…hidden in his cowl.” Misted, I think, and then of the yellowed fingernail in the grass. “But he was much older, sire. And there was something he left.”

  The Sheriff leans forward. He seems genuinely concerned now. “Tell me.”

  I look up, heartened by his interest. “A cloth with a lion’s face. A lion with hideous black eyes and a halo of flames. Have you ever heard of such a thing?�
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  The Sheriff lifts his chin. For a moment I believe that he might say yes. That he will know what it means, and it will begin to lead us to the man and to Sara. But instead he sighs and scratches his thick grey-black beard and moves to the windowsill beside me. So near that his leg touches mine. I am all too aware that we are alone together in his office.

  “I am afraid I have not, child. But tell me, do you have it still, this cloth?”

  My frustration comes out in blush. “No, the outlaws took it with my purse.”

  The Sheriff takes this in. “Interesting that they should take it, is it not?”

  “They took everything.”

  “But a cloth of no obvious value…” He places a hand on the small of my back. I tense. He speaks soft to my ear. “Will you do me a favour…Brya? Keep this information to yourself. Let me investigate. There are already rumours afloat in the land. The people grow fearful. They will believe anything. Stories of faceless men in cowls with hideous lion marks will only make them panic and scatter like sheep at the first cry of the wolf.”

  “Perhaps sheep should scatter at the cry of the wolf.” I wriggle away from his hand, which I hate pressed against my lower back. So, too, the dismissive way he describes my memory. “It is no story, sire. The hooded man was real. His blade was too. With it, he nearly took my life.”

  “Is that so?” The Sheriff frowns deeply. But there is something insincere about it. The way one might appease a small child on the verge of a tantrum. “But how did you evade him, this terrible foe?”

  At this, my words stumble. How is it that I did? When I moved in the dust of the clearing to slip past his blackened blade. And with Maroon Eyes this morning? What possessed me, that I should find such speed in my sinew, such courage in my fear? Are these things inside of me now, here, when beside the Lord Sheriff I feel so small and insignificant? A child.

  Like a child I give up and step away from the windowsill. I get a single step.

  The Sheriff’s hand is at my wrist. I am too shocked, and he is too strong. He pulls me back. His other hand comes behind my head. Rifles through my hair and then grabs it. Presses his mouth close. There is only his breath, hot and smoky. Then he pushes his lips onto mine. His beard scratches my chin. Any sound I make is stifled by his tongue, his fingers knotted into my hair.

  Finally, his lips pull back an inch from mine. He wears the knowing grin from the portrait and whispers, “Young girls who tell stories can earn reputations.”

  There are footsteps. The tap of a cane down the corridor. With the swiftness of a cat, the Lord Sheriff releases me. When they appear at the door, Lady Ariel with a tall, slender man with a mottled bald scalp and a cane in his left hand, he is standing over the parchments on his desk.

  I am rigid as a tree. My pulse is racing and I can barely breathe.

  “Lady Ariel,” the Sheriff says, with remarkable ease. “Lord Mortain. Do come in.”

  Lady Ariel’s face pinches. “Brya, what are you doing here? Lord Sheriff, I do apologise! I have told her. She does not know her place. Why are you disturbing the Sheriff?”

  The Lord Sheriff raises a hand. His voice is a liquid balm. “It is quite alright, m’lady. The child wished to speak with me. It is understandable. After your experience on the road, and this episode with the girl, well…she needed reassurance.” The Sheriff looks at me. “But do remember what I said, Brya. You must be discreet. Leave the matter with me.”

  I stare at him, unable to speak. He turns to the bald man with the cane. “Lord Mortain, I could seek your wisdom on these troubling matters?”

  Mortain nods once. From inside a cloud of fury and shame, I realise that he is looking at me. His dark eyes are intent. I cannot meet the gaze. Indeed, I cannot look at any of them. Finding my feet, I hurry past them. So I flee the first kiss of my life, which has made my skin crawl and my heart sick.

  I do not stop until I reach my guestroom. I shut the door and climb under the covers. Rain begins to fall. Soft then harder, drops slicing through the window slit. A few strike my face. I replay our conversation in my mind. Did I somehow invite the Sheriff’s advance? I cannot see how. I sought only his help. But he did not believe me. Or he did not want to.

  The rain thickens into the dusk.

  I wonder if, somewhere out there, Sara hears it fall.

  5.

  I must have fallen asleep. For when I awake my neck is stiff and the room has darkened. A sneak of sulphur plays on my nostrils. For a moment, it begins to drag at my memory, pull me into the darkest corner. I resist. Pinch at my arms. Contain myself.

  Once I step into the corridor the smell is gone. Perhaps I dreamt it. There are the homelier scents of pork and ale and candlewax. I follow them down a curving stairwell to the open doors of the great hall. Raucous conversation and melodies spill from the fire-lit space. Three long tables have been set: noblemen and their wives, sons and daughters. The Lord Sheriff is at the head of one. He lifts his goblet to toast – speaking goodwill to the King on his missions abroad. I keep out of his sight. Scan the room for Guy. I spy Lady Ariel and Lord Anson. Beatrice. But not Guy.

  Are the riders not back yet? The thought of him being in Sherwood Forest after dusk makes me uneasy.

  I could steal a horse; go find him. It is a mad thought, of course. Where would I begin? Guy would tell me to stay here, where I am protected. And yet I do not feel wholly safe in this castle.

  I am arguing with Guy, as if he were here to argue back, when a body stops next to me on the rug outside the doors. Their presence makes me jump. It is the tall, bald man from the Sheriff’s chamber. I see his face better now. He is perhaps forty years old. He has tiny scars on his cheeks. His eyes betray the intelligence of his years.

  “Beg your pardon, m’lady.” His is a gravelly voice, thick but not unpleasant. “My cane usually announces me. I am Walter of Mortain.”

  “It is alright, sire.” I nod and glance away. I wonder how much he saw earlier. Is he a good friend of the Lord Sheriff? “My name is Brya of Gisbourne.”

  Lord Mortain’s eyes match his black suit. “May I ask, why you are standing to the edge of the banquet?”

  Something about his manner draws me to honesty. “I do not quite feel myself, sire.”

  “I am familiar with that feeling.”

  For some reason I believe him. “But you are the guest of honour, sire,” I say, recalling what Lady Ariel told us.

  Mortain taps his cane once. “True, but then honour is a curious measure.”

  “I’m sorry, sire. I do not understand.”

  He takes a sharp intake of breath. Watches for a time the lights of the banquet ahead of us. “I mean that honour is an idea of man. No more, no less. And ideas are very curious creatures. One man’s honour is another man’s crime.”

  I wonder on this. I think of Guy. He is the most honourable person I know. Aware that I may be speaking out of turn with this nobleman, a cousin of the King, I say, “Do you not believe there is right and there is wrong?”

  Mortain examines me. I try to read his gaze but his round black eyes give away no secrets. “I believe there is life and there is death, m’lady. And that every soul is right that fights for its existence. From man down to humble beast.”

  At this, he nods in parting – “good evening” – and steps forward with his cane into the banquet hall. The Sheriff sees him and raises a great cheer that fills the banquet. Mortain nods once. It seems to be his way. He does not appear to thrive under the attention.

  I remain at the threshold a moment longer. His words linger after he has left them. They seem to have cast an odd chill on my heart.

  *

  I join Beatrice at her table. I try to enjoy the food but my appetite is slim. The pork tastes dry. The wine is heavy. Beatrice pinches my elbow.

  “Have you spotted anyone you fancy?” she asks, winking at me.

  In truth I have not taken notice of any of the noble sons. But I sense that Beatrice has. “Have you?”

&nbs
p; She blushes. “You must guess!”

  I do not have much patience for Beatrice’s games tonight. But she keeps staring at me, so I sigh and take in the tables and faces around us. I try to imagine who would take Beatrice’s fancy. None seem to stand out. I see the same raised chins. I hear the same braying laughs.

  Finally my eyes stop on one. Sat to the edge of a table. His hair is black and neatly kept. I remember him from earlier. The boy had been reading a book in the corridor. There is something else familiar about him that I cannot yet place.

  Beatrice is staring at me, wide-eyed. “How did you know?”

  I am a little surprised. The boy is handsome, certainly, but with a delicate quality that is almost feminine. Beatrice usually talks of strong men. Knights.

  “I spoke with him. Do you know who he is?”

  I shake my head.

  “Adam of Mortain. He carries royal blood.”

  So he is the son of Walter, I think. “Is that why you like him?”

  As soon as I speak them I regret the sharpness of my words.

  “No!” Beatrice is indignant. “He seems quite remarkable, in fact, quite brilliant. You know, he speaks four languages!”

  I look over again. I can see some of the resemblance with his father now. They share the same black eyes and high forehead. I wonder if Adam shares also his father’s strange views on honour and life. Adam spots me. He nods a greeting, much like his father. I smile and turn away.

  “Beatrice, do you think Guy is alright?”

  “Oh please do not upset me more, Brya! Guy is with the sheriff’s men. They are the finest soldiers. They will be quite all right, I am sure. We are at a beautiful banquet! Let us be merry!”

  Sometimes her infectious energy works on me. I try to put aside for now the recent experiences with the Sheriff and in the clearing. When the meal is done the servants clear the tables and a lyre band starts up from the head of the hall. The woman sings about lost loves. The Lord Sheriff begins the dance with a lady dressed in green. The hall fills with slowly spinning pairs. A noble-son with a huge belly asks Beatrice to dance. She gives me a look but takes his hand, merging in with the pairs. I stand to the edge. The melody teases my ankles. Finally a nobleman in purple velvet approaches. He is plump with bright shiny cheeks. Without a word he leads me into the dance. His eyes dart around, hardly ever on mine. I do not much mind. I am thinking about dancing with Guy.