Outlaw Princess of Sherwood

by Nancy Springer

  “I was a fool,” he said grimly, “a wrongheaded fool to forget the right order of things, to let you learn from books.”

  “Not so, Father. I thank you for teaching me.” Ettarde leaned toward him, for she really wanted him to understand. “You are a very good scholar.” She paused, bracing herself to say what was next in her thoughts. “But Father, you are not a good king.”

  “And not a good husband,” said a quiet, sweet voice Etty had not expected. Her mother.

  King Solon felt that voice, Etty saw. It struck him speechless. But he lifted his chin, his pointed beard, like a weapon.

  Etty said earnestly, “Father, your kingdom is an accident of your birth, that is all. Think! Has it not always been a burden to you, making you harsh and bitter?” For a rueful moment Etty wondered what her father would have been like had fate not made him a king. Whether he would have treated her with more of a father’s love. But it was no use thinking of what might have been. “Has not your truest heart been always with your books? Why not cast off the cares of Auberon, join a monastery—”

  “Bah! You’re insane,” he said hoarsely. As if her words frightened him, with much haste but small dignity he scrambled to his feet.

  From off to one side an utterly unexpected voice said, “‘There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.’ Seneca.” It was Beau who spoke.

  “Mon foi!” Ettarde exclaimed, grinning at her.

  “Impudence beyond impudence,” stormed King Solon as he thrust a shaking finger at Ettarde. “You—vixen, wretched shrew—you no longer deserve to be called my daughter.”

  She turned back to him, sober again. “I am sorry you feel that way, Father.”

  This was true. With a pang in her heart she wished it were otherwise between them.

  Does he love me, deep inside? At all?

  Likely she would never know.

  King Solon ranted, “Bah! A pox on you and all your cohorts. Stay here and bear my curse.”

  “If the innocent folk of Auberon bleed and die, Father,” Etty told him quietly, “it will not be by my doing.”

  “Idiocy!” He turned to storm away, but the guards seized him by the arms. “Unhand me!” he shouted, struggling against them no more effectively than a bug. The guards looked to Robin, and Robin looked to Etty.

  “Let him go back to Fountain Dale,” she said.

  Robin told the guards, “Guide him there.”

  Take him by a long and roundabout path, he meant. They started to blindfold the king first, so that he would not learn the way to Robin’s hideout. But King Solon ducked the strip of cloth, looked over his shoulder and snapped at his wife, “Come, woman!”

  Queen Elsinor remained seated by the fire, shaking her head serenely. “I will visit with my daughter yet awhile, good my lord.”

  “I bade you come!”

  She did not move, but said as pleasantly as if she spoke of the weather, “What, after you put me in a cage? I cherish and obey you no longer, my lord. Go your ways.”

  The guards blindfolded him and tugged him toward the forest. “My curse on all of you!” he screamed as they half carried him away.

  Several days later, footsore and much farther north, Etty stood at the edge of a forest called Barnesdale Wood, gazing over common land where the prickles of last year’s furze were being burned to make way for new green shoots. Peering beyond smoke and small flame, Ettarde could see soft hills, a lazy loop of river, freshly plowed strips of field, and then the village and the fortress of Celydon.

  “I never thought to come home to my brother as such a beggar,” murmured her mother from atop the white pony, Dove.

  Etty placed her hand on Dove’s swanlike neck and looked up at her mother with a smile. Mother, who had no shoes, rode the elegant pony. The rest of them had walked: Beau, Lionel, Rowan, Rook, Ettarde herself, and a few of Robin Hood’s men for an added measure of safety. They had been walking since the hour Ettarde had sent King Solon on his way. Etty had decided then, with her mother’s agreement and Robin Hood’s blessing, that it was better for her and her mother to be elsewhere in case King Solon managed to rally his men-at-arms and attempt to reclaim his wife and daughter.

  Etty had run to the rowan hollow first, to say goodbye to Rowan and Lionel and Rook, but the band had refused to be left behind. Now here they all stood at the outskirts of Celydon Manor.

  And Ettarde had to make yet another hard decision.

  Between what she wanted and what she knew she had to do.

  But there was no choice, really. Ettarde looked down at her own hands, her knuckles rough and her nails ragged from shelling hazelnuts and shooting arrows and digging wild parsnips and gathering firewood and playing at quarterstaffs with Rowan. Uncle Marcus would not approve of her hands any more than Mother did. Slowly, careful not to sigh, Etty slipped the thin silver ring off her finger.

  “Not for my sake, please, dear,” said her mother’s soft voice, like an angel’s, from above.

  Etty shook her head. “No.” Although in truth she was thinking partly of her mother, whose life had taken some hard turns of late. Etty considered that Mother deserved to have her daughter by her side when she entered Celydon castle to ask her brother, the lord, for aid and shelter. But Etty’s greater concern was for Rowan and Lionel and Rook and, yes, Beau. And Robin Hood. Ettarde knew quite well that, until she learned her father’s intentions, she must consider herself a danger to the others in her band and all the outlaws in the forest. Let Uncle Marcus bear the task of protecting her and dealing with Solon the Red.

  Etty knew what she had to do. Still, she could not quite help blinking back tears as she turned to Rowan and held out her strand of the silver ring.

  There was a murmur of dismay from the others. Rowan took a step back, exclaiming, “No, Etty, keep it.”

  “But I want you to have it. Or give it to Beau.” Etty turned to the proud, dark-eyed girl, who wore brown leggings and a brown mantle with her crimson tunic now. “Let her take my place.”

  Rowan said, “No one can take your place. We’ll welcome Beau for her own sake . . . ” Rowan shot a questioning glance at Lionel. With only a single, appealing glance heavenward, he nodded. Rowan nodded back. “We’ll welcome Beau for her own sake if she wants to stay.” And Rowan, also, turned gravely to Beau.

  Overhead, the little brown tree-creeper birds twittered and drummed, but for once Beau seemed at a loss for words. Her mouth softened like a shy child’s, her eloquent eyes widened, and in their gaze Ettarde sensed a muddle of surprised emotion: joy, fear, doubt, longing. In that moment, Ettarde felt that Beau could have been her sister. She blurted, “Beau, your parents, your people—why did you run away?”

  The girl fixed her with her midnight gaze. “Because they beat me,” she said. “Always beat, beat, beat. To make me be silent and maidenly.”

  Lionel chuckled. “You? Silent?”

  Her sudden grin flashed. “You see! It is useless, non?”

  “No. I mean, yes.”

  Rowan pulled from her finger the three remaining strands of the puzzle ring that had been her mother’s, and separated one. “For Beau,” she said, offering it. “We are an outlaw band, Beau, and you will be a strand of the band. Without being silent and maidenly.”

  The outcast girl took it, saying nothing. Perhaps she could not speak. Etty noticed that her dark eyes swam liquid, like wells.

  “Etty, keep yours,” Rowan said. “You will always be one of us.”

  “I will try—” Etty heard her voice wavering, steadied it and started over. “I will try to come back to you.”

  They all stood looking at each other, but that could not go on forever. It was time. Etty turned to give her mother a hand, and Queen Elsinor began to dismount.

  “No! No, keep the little Dove, take her with you,” Beau said all in a breath.

  Etty turned to her in astonishment. She knew how Beau adored Dove. “But she’s yours!”

  “Not so.” Impish thoughts glinted in Beau’s
eyes. “She belongs to the stables of the high king.”

  Lionel complained, “Porridgehead, you’re an outlaw now! You’re dead if the king catches you.”

  “True. But there is scant forage for a pony in the wildwood,” Beau said. “Take her.” Beau’s eyes flashed up to Queen Elsinor’s pale face. “Good my lady, ride her into Celydon, do, and no one will call you a beggar.”

  So that was it.

  A royal gift, and Etty knew she had to swallow her pride and accept it. She gave the dark-eyed girl the nod of an equal. “Thank you.”

  Her mother echoed her words. “Beau, thank you.”

  “No, my lady, no, Princess Ettarde, thank you.”

  Etty hugged Beau—finally it felt right to touch and hug this oddling. Then she put her arms around Rook, who stank—a pox on it; Etty hugged the wild boy anyway. And big, gentle Lionel got a long hug. And finally Rowan. Rowan Hood, mystic and healer, the one to whom they all looked as leader, although she considered herself their equal—Rowan was the hardest one to leave. Etty gave her a fierce embrace and turned away quickly.

  There. Celydon. Maidservants, baths, proper meals, rich gowns to wear—how miserable. Blinking, Etty laid a hand on Dove’s neck, looked up at her mother’s pale face, nodded and walked out of the forest.

  Rowan’s voice sounded behind her, grave and steady, as always. “Come back if you need us.”

  And Lionel called, his voice not nearly as steady, “You know your way. If you need us . . . my dear little lady.”

  Etty grinned, and knew she should tell him she was not his dear little lady, but she could not speak. She could barely see her way, what with tears stinging and blurring her eyes. She did not dare look back at her friends lest she break down altogether. But she lifted a hand to show that she had heard them, and leading her mother’s white pony, Princess Ettarde strode across sheep pasture toward Celydon.

  “ ‘Nothing lasts forever except change,’ ” Beau called to her from the forest she was leaving behind. “Heraclitus.”

  Confound the rascal. Etty smiled.

  ALSO BY NANCY SPRINGER

  I AM MORDRED

  A Tale from Camelot

  I AM MORGAN LE FAY

  A Tale from Camelot

  ROWAN HOOD

  Outlaw Girl of Sherwood Forest

  LIONCLAW

  A Tale of Rowan Hood

  RIBBITING TALES