Previously...
A green dress, lacing at the front. Surely it can't be. I go to take a closer look and my breath catches in my throat.
Marian kept many dresses in the castle, maybe more than she kept at Knighton. She would not have known she would never return to reclaim them.
I press my face into the silky fabric, but all I can smell is lavender. Her perfume, just like her whispered words, is gone.
Nessa lightly touches my arm. "Do you want to talk, lad?"
I shake my head, manage to say, "No, I should be going." I stride out of the house without looking back.
Nessa, Rowena, Much — they are all there for me. And I do want to talk. Except of the people I want to talk to most, one no longer lives, and the other I had sent away.
Chapter 24
I turn around at the sound of someone approaching, lower my nocked bow when I see it's only Allan. Sweat beads his brow, as though he's been running far and fast and I have a sudden fear that Prince John's men are back already and attacking Locksley.
"Is everything all right?" I ask.
"I could ask you the same thing." He bends over to catch his breath, hands on his upper thighs for support. "We've been looking for you for ages. Much was convinced you'd thrown yourself in Locksley pond. He was talking about diving in and searching for you until he remembered he can't swim."
"I was visiting my peasants."
"And your peasants just happen to live in the middle of a field, do they?" Allan indicates the freshly turned earth, the striped furrows stretching in front and behind me.
"Locksley is my home," I say. "We've been travelling for months to get here and now, in the space of two days, we are leaving. You've never lived in one place for a long time. You wouldn't understand."
"I understand that Prince John's not going to invite us to his next banquet unless we happen to be the main course. I thought we were going to Sherwood, Robin. At this rate, we'll be lucky to make the camp before nightfall."
I look at the sky. Allan is right. We should have got moving ages ago. Instead, I am standing in the middle of a field fretting over a dress. "I'm sorry. I lost track of time."
"Are you all right?" he asks. "Is it Rowena? I don't want to pry or nothing, but have you two had words or something?"
"No. Nothing like that. It's fine. We're fine." I shoulder my bow. My fingers are still buttery from Nessa's fruit bread.
Allan scratches his head and then his nose. He toes a clod of earth until it hits another clod and then crushes them with his booted foot.
"What is it?" I ask.
"Nah, it's nothing. Only..."
"Only what? Come on, Allan. Speak your piece."
"I would, only the last time I did that I got a ruddy great smack for it."
I recall our punch up on the boat: fists and insults flying, a broken jug, me on the floor with a bloody nose.
"Whatever it is, I won't hit you. I promise."
Despite my assurance I won't put a fist in his face, Allan steps back a pace.
"Thing is, you told us you were going to use Gisborne as a spy and then, as soon as we got back to England, you sent him away. I'm not saying that it wouldn't have been a bit...well, weird, him being on our side, but after yesterday I would have thought we could use all the help we can get."
"I felt differently about it when I got home."
"Because of Marian?"
I nod.
"I get that. It's just you changed your mind so quickly and—" Allan's eyes widen.
My heart starts thumping wildly. He can't know of my shameful thoughts about Guy, surely.
"You didn't kill him, did you?" Allan says. "I mean, after we got off the boat. You didn't kill him and not tell us about it? Is that it? Gisborne's dead and you didn't want to tell us because you thought we'd have a go at you."
"No." I smile, relief flooding through me. "I didn't kill him."
"That's good. At least, I think it is."
"Come on," I say. "We should get going."
"Look," he says. "Do you want me to go to Nottingham, you know, suss things out? Maybe we'll be all right for tonight. Maybe there's no great rush to get to the forest."
"I don't know. It's a bit risky."
"No more risky than riding through Sherwood in the dark."
"You may have a point there."
"You know me, Robin. I can mix and mingle, find out what's going on. Might be safer, just one of us going. If I'm clever, I could get inside the castle, snoop around a bit. I still remember where all our secret entrances are."
I give him a pointed look.
"What?" Allan says, affronted. "I didn't tell Vaisey about all of them. What do you take me for?"
I hold back any cutting remark I might have made, instead pretending to think Allan's offer over. In truth, I'll be glad of another night in Locksley. I might even be able to convince Rowena that I am prepared to court her properly. Certainly, we'll have precious little chance of talking privately in the camp.
"All right," I say. "But be careful and whatever you do, don't get caught."
~
My hope of talking to Rowena ends in disappointment. When I eventually return to the manor house, I find her already abed: not in my bed as I'd hoped, but in Thornton's old room. Much tells me she was feeling unwell, assuring me it was nothing serious: women's things, as he put it. She told him to wish me a good night. I rather think she is deliberately avoiding me, but I decide against knocking on her door in case she was telling Much the truth.
I once caught Isabella crouched in the corner of her bedchamber, a trail of bloody splodges leading from the doorway to her trembling little body. When Guy came crashing through the door moments later, cursing me for cheating at hide and seek, I don't know who was the more embarrassed, him or me. Isabella screamed at us to get out. United by the incident, Guy and I spent the rest of the afternoon together, speaking in hushed tones, neither of us really knowing exactly what was happening to Isabella other than she had somehow, at the tender age of nine summers, become a woman.
I don't know how old Rowena is; younger than Marian is — was — but certainly old enough to have bled many times over. Pushing aside the image of her crouching in the corner of Thornton's old room, blood seeping through her tight breeches, I bid Much and John a good night. Both of them head for the servant's quarters to sleep.
I know I should go to bed too, enjoy what may well be my last sleep for some time in a comfortable bed, but the effort seems too much. Instead, I pour myself a goblet of wine and make myself halfway comfortable in the fireside chair, even though there is no fire to warm myself by or to stare into.
I awake still in the chair, the empty goblet at my feet and morning sun streaming through an open shutter.
~
After a hurried meal of watery oats and a mug of ale — minus Rowena, who tells Much through a closed door that she's fine, but doesn't feel like eating — we gather up our weapons, water and wine skins and some bread and dried meat and start the long ride to the camp.
Within sight of Sherwood, Allan joins us.
"What news from Nottingham?" I ask, hoping Allan hasn't spent the whole of his time there drinking and performing tavern tricks.
"I couldn't get into the castle," he says. "There were guards everywhere. But I did learn from a knight supping at The Trip that Prince John isn't in Nottingham."
"Where is he then?"
Allan shrugs. "The knight didn't know, or wouldn't say."
"Anything else?" I ask. "Has a new sheriff been appointed yet?"
"Yeah, Murdac I think his name was, or it could have been Murdock."
"Never heard of him. Much?"
Much shakes his head.
"This knight," Allan says, "said the new sheriff was laid up with some kind of malady and that the master-at-arms was running things in his absence; a nasty piece of work by all accounts. That's all I got, I'm afraid. The knight had had one too many and spent most of the time telling me how he hated high places and what rotten luck it was he'd pulled double guard duty on the castle battlements."
"That's all right," I say. "You did well. And it sounds as though we have some breathing space for the time being without John or a sheriff around to hound us."
I push away the niggling thought that the 'nasty piece of work' Allan mentioned might in fact be Gisborne.
Motioning everyone to move off, I draw up alongside Rowena and, when she doesn't acknowledge me, I tap her on the knee.
"You were at the castle before you came to Locksley," I say. "For how long?"
"A few months."
"Then you'll have met the new sheriff, this Murdac fellow?"
"I was in the kitchens, remember."
"But you must have seen him, when you served table?"
"Now and then."
"So, what's he like, this new sheriff of ours?"
Rowena shrugs. "Short, bow-legged, fat-stomached."
Allan laughs. "Doesn't sound like too much of a threat."
Rowena reins in her mount, rounds on Allan. "He's a power-hungry tyrant and you'll do well not to cross his path."
"Blimey. Sorry I spoke."
Rowena shakes her head. "No, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm a little out of sorts this morning."
"Here," I say. "Let me take your pack and bow."
Rowena hands them over with an apologetic smile. I guess me reminding her of her unhappy time in the castle was not a good idea. She has been through a lot these past two days and now I'm asking her ride to a camp in the middle of a forest when she is not at her best. She may act tough, but this girl is neither Djaq nor Marian. I should have found somewhere else for her to stay, somewhere safe, with Matilda maybe.
"We can stop and rest, if you like," I say.
"No, I'm fine, really."
As if to prove she is indeed in good health, she whacks her boots on her horse's flanks and gallops across the open grassland towards the forest.
I whack my own horse's flanks and speed after her.
~
As we make our way through the forest, Rowena's eyes dart this way and that.
"Relax," I tell her with a smile. "The only threat in the forest used to be us."
"What about boars and wolves and things?" she asks.
"Don't worry," Much says. "If anything like that comes rushing at us Robin will..." Much lets go his reins, mimes nocking and loosing an arrow. "And then we'll have something for supper."
"But if that doesn't happen," I say, "then Much will shinny up a tree."
"Why?" Rowena asks.
"Because that's where the squirrels live."
Rowena glances between Much and me, puzzled.
"Ha, ha," Much says. "Very funny. You should be grateful you get anything at all."
Any witty retort dies on my tongue as we ride by a great oak, quite possibly the largest oak in the forest. It's our tree. Marian's and mine. The Kissing Tree. I slip a hand inside my shirt and finger Marian's ring, tears crowding my eyes.
"I could do with a moment to...you know." Rowena nods towards the trees.
"Of course," I say.
"You can go on ahead," she says.
"Don't be daft," Allan says. "You'll never find the camp without us."
"I meant just Robin."
"Thank you," I mouth, taking off before anyone has time to protest. I may not know much about Rowena, but of one thing I am certain: unobservant she is not.
After a short while, I find myself in an area of forest that looks more familiar than most. Reining in my horse, I look about me. As I do, a memory of a time I'd rather forget comes back to me so vividly it's as if it happened only yesterday.
~
It had been just Gisborne and me; kicking and punching, spitting angry words, beating each other bloody. Because I'd seen that tattoo on his arm and I knew I had the proof that he was a traitor, proof that he tried to kill the king in the Holy Land.
"Is this what you're after?" I said, holding up the betrothal ring he'd earlier pressed on Marian and then tossing it onto the fallen leaves. "Who else, Gisborne?" I demanded. "You do not travel to the Holy Land to try and kill the King of England on your own. At least you don't. You're not that clever."
He didn't tell me who else, but I was confident Vaisey was behind it somehow. I told him I'd see him and whoever else was involved hang for treason when the king returned, to which Guy reminded me that if the king returned he would still win. He would win Marian.
That's when the rage I'd been keeping a lid on boiled over. As Guy bent to retrieve the discarded ring, I lashed out with my boot, sending him sprawling. A heartbeat later, I had my blade to his throat and I was incensed enough to use it. Little John and the gang stopped me.
"Killing we do not do."
"He's right. At least that's what you taught us."
"We do not take part in bloodshed...unless absolutely necessary."
Two days ago had been necessary. Rowena's life had depended on my killing the knight who'd been going for her. True, I had let my anger and fear get the better of me, but the result had been the desired one. Because ever since Guy stabbed Marian, when she was in her Night Watchman guise, my story had changed — Robin Hood does kill.
However, on the particular day I am thinking of, I had chosen not to kill. Because if I had killed Guy that day, then it was quite likely Djaq would have lost her life, which would have meant not only losing a valued and much cared for member of my gang, but also the woman Will Scarlett loved, the woman he now shares his life with, back in the Holy Land. If I had killed Guy that day, I might have changed all of that. But I would still have had Marian. However, if I am honest with myself, I think Will is the more deserving of the two of us.
I know I should stop; it is senseless going over the past. Yet I find myself continuing to play out the fight, going over every moment of it, like some delicious kind of torture. It's only shame and the thought that the gang and Rowena might come across me that keeps me in my saddle, uncomfortable though it is.
"Make no mistake," I said, flinging away my fire-heated sword, the one I'd been about to brand Guy's face with. "This ends here, traitor." I put up my fists.
The fight was a long one and as we punched and kicked, we traded insults — about the war, about the king, about my returning to Nottingham. And then Marian appeared, along with poor Much who I'd callously told to leave me when he would not condone my torturing Guy. She had stood at the top of the slope, near to where I am now, shaking her head at me, at us, as we lay on the ground, dirty, bloodied and beaten.
That was the end of the fight. With Guy once more tied to a tree, so I slumped against another tree while Marian chastised me for my behaviour.
I tried to explain to her about Guy's attempt to kill the king in the Holy Land, but she didn't believe me. She thought the fight was about me and her. Maybe it was. But even when she began to have doubts, recalling Guy's so-called contagion, she forbade me to kill him.
"Of course," I said. "He is to be your husband."
She had countered with the argument that she had agreed to the engagement under duress and that she had to play things from the inside, for her father if for no one else. She had said she did not have the option of just running off into the forest.
"Everything is a choice," I replied, throwing her words back at her.
What would I do then, if Guy appeared right now, here in the forest? What choice would I make? Would I still want to thump and kick and beat him bloody? The answer should be yes. But I can't forget everything that's happened since Acre: the pirates, the boat sinking, him saving me from drowning, the meadow in Saint-Étienne and our drunken night in the barn. All those moments leading up to that one defining moment in a shadowy alleyway in Le Havre when an unholy want overcame me and I imagined myself lying with a man, with Guy.
My horse whinnies and I let go the reins and fumble for my bow. When I see it isn't Guy riding towards me, I almost can't breathe for disappointment.
Much canters over. Feeling as though I must have guilty etched on my forehead, I loop my bow over my head and shove it behind my back.
"Is everything all right?" he asks. "Only we've been waiting for you for ages."
"Waiting, why? Where?"
"Near the camp, by Will's carving of Dan. We would have gone on, but we thought...that is I thought, we should all be together. But if you want to be alone for a bit then—"
"No, it's fine," I say. "I got lost."
Much gives me a puzzled look. I can understand why. I know the forest better than all of them.
"After you," I say.
Much wheels his horse around and I follow him up the slope.
~
"I swear we shut that before we left." Allan is nodding towards the cunningly disguised doorway to our hidden camp. It is wide open.
Keeping my eye on the open doorway, I dismount. The gang and Rowena do likewise.
"Master, why should the door be open? Do you think—?"
"There could be any number of reasons," I cut across Much. "We've been away a long time and people are curious. It's hardly surprising they might seek out the lair of Robin Hood, especially if they think there might be wealth hidden inside it."
"Not being funny, but it could have just been the wind or something."
"It could," I say, "but somehow I doubt it." I nock my bow.
Rowena stands beside me, bow in hand.
"Wait here," I tell both her and the gang.
Much, John and Allan ready their weapons, but do not attempt to follow me as I creep towards the open doorway; they know better than to question my decisions. Rowena, however, decides otherwise and follows, her boots swishing the leaves underfoot.
"I said to wait," I hiss.
She gives me a sullen look but stays where she is.
Slowly, I make my way through the open doorway and into the camp. I look around. Everything appears to be as we left it all those months ago: Much's cooking pots; empty mugs and wooden bowls; a frayed belt of mine, still on the ground. The chest we kept trinkets of little value in is unmoved. Certainly, there is no sign that anyone has disturbed our forest sanctuary. I breathe out, turn around and motion the others to come in.
I walk towards my bed, remembering the many nights I'd slept there dreaming of a time when Marian and I would be together, as man and wife. As I stare through a blur of tears, I realise my blanket, the striped one, isn't on my bed. Neither is Much's.
Someone coughs. I whip up my bow and hastily nock an arrow. The cough came from in front of me, not behind. Someone is here.