I squeezed his hand on mine. “It’s good to see you, Winchester. My lord, this is Sir David, and you may remember Allan a Dale.”
Winchester nodded to both of them. “Welcome. Forgive the location, but we are currently entertaining Prince John’s knights in the castle, and I assumed by your subterfuge regarding your name that you did not wish to be known. You must come inside, rest, and tell me how it is you came to be here.”
“Yes,” I told him. “But first, I want you to know that I asked Eleanor to meet me here. There is important information she needs to hear—not the least of which is that I’m still alive.”
His eyebrows lifted. “Eleanor? And her ladies?”
I frowned. “Yes.”
He near smiled. “Oh. That’s excellent. Fine. Of course, I would love to receive the queen. I’ll make sure she is diverted here so the city is not aware of her presence.” He dropped his head in a bow. “Come. Let’s go inside. I’m sure you and your men are hungry.”
“Yes,” Allan said, grinning.
“Shameless,” I heard David grunt.
“There’s no glory in shame,” Allan said back.
“So,” Winchester said, sitting at a rather intimidating table after bringing us food and drink and seating me beside him. “Please tell me how you came to be here, my lady.”
“Prince John tried to kill me,” I told him.
Winchester’s eyes flicked to Allan. “I had heard he had accomplished that deed long ago.”
“He held me in prisons. Away from Eleanor, I believe.”
Winchester tapped the table. “I was helping her,” he told me. “Eleanor. She didn’t believe John had killed you, and she tasked me with finding you. I think I came rather close too. Were you ever at Arundel or Brackley castles?” he asked.
“Yes,” David said. “Both.”
Winchester frowned. “And how would you know that?”
“Eleanor put a knight in Prince John’s employ to protect me,” I told him. “David were—David was one of my captors, but he saved my life.” I stumbled over the right words.
Winchester nodded at him. “Your service, sir, is most deeply appreciated.”
David looked down.
“I saved her life too,” Allan said. “From a horde in London! She would have been trampled to death if it weren’t for me.”
“Yes,” I said, nodding. “Thank you, Allan.”
He smiled, satisfied.
Winchester looked at me. “Does Locksley know yet?”
I shook my head. “No. I can’t get word to him, not if Prince John still thinks I’m dead.” Maybe I would be able to find my way to Nottingham after I told Eleanor; maybe Rob could hide me in the castle until my father returned, and I wouldn’t endanger the people with my presence.
Maybe.
“Perhaps I can get word.”
I took in a breath. It spun out before me, Winchester whispering the words to Rob. I could see his face, trying to keep the secret in, relieved and desperate—for only a moment before he stormed out of the castle to find me, wherever I were. If he knew I were alive, he’d burn down Hell itself to get to me. He’d leave the people alone with Prince John as their overlord to find me.
The breath rushed out of me. Unless it were me, telling him in the flesh, the only thing that would come from Rob knowing were the kind of danger that would leave him dead. And I couldn’t go to him until King Richard were safe, and my being alive again wouldn’t purchase someone else’s death. “Let me think about it,” I told him.
His brows knit together, but he nodded. “Why would Prince John dare to kill you? And why now, after hiding you for so long?” Winchester asked.
I looked up at him for a moment. “I think he means to kill Richard. Or try to, anyway. He told me that Richard would never return to England.”
Winchester leaned back, his jaw tight. “That damn coward,” he grunted. “While I believe it, that is a very steep charge, Marian. Do you know how?”
I shook my head.
“You’re right,” he said. “He’d never risk harming you if he thought he’d have to face Richard.”
“Which makes me wonder if he’s been planning this since the day he took my fingers,” I said to him, my words soft.
Winchester glanced at me, and then toward the hand I kept hidden under the table, and made a hmm noise.
I looked away. “You’re refusing people at the gates?” I asked.
He sighed, nodding. “For now. Too many people are coming through, and the city can’t hold them. I have enough money and food to keep my people safe, and until I figure out how to do more, that’s all I can promise them.”
“We were in Silchester when the news came,” I told him. “The knights killed a boy for throwing something at them.”
His shoulders dropped. “I will see what I can do to help them,” he said solemn.
“I didn’t mean for you to take responsibility,” I told him, shaking my head.
“And yet I must. Nobles are frightened, Lady Marian. They aren’t defending their people, much less taking care of them. They are afraid of mobs and riots, of starvation and poverty. They are neglecting their duty. But I will not forget what that duty is. Even if I must do the work of others.”
“Perhaps that is true,” I told him. “But you didn’t kill that boy. I didn’t kill that boy. I will find out who made that man believe he had any right to do it.” I shook my head. “Have you . . .” I drew a breath, trying to find the words. “When did you last—when did you see him?”
He swallowed. “A few weeks ago.”
I just looked at him.
“He . . . he would greatly benefit from hearing you’re alive,” he told me.
His careful words stabbed me. “He’s not doing well,” I said.
“He’s not bad,” Allan said, and I looked to him. “He’s just not nearly the same man he is when you’re with him, lady thief.”
Winchester wouldn’t look at me.
I tried to swallow, but the thought stuck in my throat.
“My lord,” said a quiet voice, and Winchester turned to one of his guards. He gestured him forward, and the man murmured something to Winchester, who sighed. He nodded.
“Lady Marian, please excuse me. There’s a dispute in the town I should go settle.”
I nodded.
“Eat and drink; I don’t know when the queen mother will arrive, but you should probably rest,” he said, and his eyes moved over me in the same way David’s did. I pulled the cloak tighter around me. Honestly. I were alive, and after three months in prison, I were grateful for that.
His servants led me to a room, while David and Allan went to the knights’ barracks—to Allan’s horror—but before they went Allan pulled the small stack of letters he’d shown me the night before from his satchel. He handed it to me, meeting my eyes and nodding once, and I took it, holding it against me.
I sat in the room, staring at the pile. There were five letters. I’d counted them twice, laid them all out without breaking their seals. They were numbered, but it were strange—they weren’t in any order I knew. The first were 27, then 52, then 76, then 91, and 132. Each one bore my name. The first one had my name in tight scrawl, like it were hasty, desperate, but 76 started to get wider, looser, softer. Easier.
I traced the letters with my fingers, but I didn’t open them. Now that we were here, now that Eleanor were coming, maybe I could go back to Nottingham.
But no matter where I went, if Prince John knew I lived, he would find me. He would hunt me down, and he would make the people I loved pay for my being alive before he took my life at last. He’d branded me a traitor, and there were little I could do to stop him.
Maybe he wouldn’t kill me. Maybe he’d throw me back in a prison, a place of darkness, until the world forgot I’d been there at all.
How long would it take Rob to forget me?
There weren’t no answers that would satisfy me. But I knew that if I opened one of Rob’s letters, saw h
is writing and pictured him penning the things to me, I’d go. I’d go straight away to Nottingham, and I’d risk watching him die in front of me at Prince John’s gleeful hand.
Stacking and tying them careful, I put them away and lay on the bed.
CHAPTER
Eleanor didn’t arrive until the next morning. When she came, it were in a carriage, with a small cadre of knights behind her. I frowned to see it from a window of the manor—she were the queen mother. She needed more protection than a handful of knights, no matter how loyal they were.
I came away from the window, waiting for her in a private chamber. I paced as moment after moment ticked by. Longer. Longer. Longer. I stared at the window, wondering if there were any risk of this being a trap. I’d only seen her carriage, after all, not her person. The message could have gone astray. Someone else could have read it and known what it meant. The person behind the door could be Prince John himself.
I didn’t have any weapons. Why had I not considered that before now?
The door latch lifted, and it opened slow. I held a breath, looking at it.
Eleanor’s pale face were flushed with color, her eyes bright and filled with water as she stood before me. The water fell, crystal drops running over her skin as she swept forward, pulling me hard into her arms. She were shaking, and I hugged her back without a thought.
“My God,” she whispered in my ear. “My God.”
Her hands touched my hair, touched my face, pulled me back from her a little to stroke my cheeks and then hug me again.
“You’re alive,” she breathed.
I nodded tight into her neck.
“I will not fail you again, my girl. I will protect you, I promise.” She nodded hard against me, like she agreed with her own self. “I’ll make you a lady-in-waiting. Or perhaps—perhaps you should leave. John thinks you’re dead, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
Her eyes narrowed. “He will know of my displeasure, Marian, but I confess that keeping you from his sight may be the smartest choice for now.”
I pulled away. “Your displeasure.”
“Yes.”
“So . . . what?” I asked. “You will scold him? He near killed me! A man died in the attempt, and all you are is displeased?”
“What do you want of me, Marian? His temper got the best of him.”
“No—he planned this. He tried to murder me in cold blood, Eleanor. He stole my necklace, and he wouldn’t watch while they did it. He wanted to be far enough away that he could deny it.”
She shook her head, proud and resolute. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“But he did. So, why, Eleanor?” I demanded. “Why would he kill me now, when he wouldn’t have dared before? Your disapproval hasn’t changed. He knows that. But there’s one person he fears more than you. There’s one person he knew he’d have to answer to, and damn soon.”
Her mouth turned down, her white face stony and cold. “That isn’t true.”
“He’s planning to kill Richard, Eleanor,” I told her.
“Why would you say such a thing?” she demanded. “He would never—”
“Hurt his own flesh?” I growled. “His own blood ?”
She glanced over me. “He doesn’t have it in him to kill Richard, Marian.”
“Well he’s planning to. Or planning to thwart the ransom somehow, I’m not sure. Only that he tried to kill me because he believes Richard will never set foot in England again.”
“You don’t know that!” she snapped at me.
“He said so!” I snapped back. I looked at her, straight in her eyes, blue like the coldest ocean water. “Do you really not believe that Prince John would covet his brother’s throne?” I asked her. “That he could easily murder his own nephew to surpass him in the succession?”
“He needs armies! Men, and Englishmen will not follow him. The nobles can be bought, but armies are a different thing, my girl.” She shook her head.
“Armies he can buy as well,” I told her. “In France, to start with. Think, Eleanor—to capture a crusader on a mission that has been sanctioned by the Pope is to risk excommunication from the Church—why would the Holy Roman Emperor ever risk that? What would induce Prince John to such a crime? He doesn’t want the Crown of England for himself, or he would have invaded instead of sending a ransom demand. Prince John could have set all of this up, Eleanor. Everything.”
“John doesn’t have that kind of money,” she said. “He’s a fifth son, even if he is a prince.”
“He has the will,” I told her. “He has the kind of manipulative mind to put such a thing in motion. You know he does.”
“You will not tell me what I know,” she said. She turned away from me, and paused for a breath before she left the room, shaking her head.
I watched her go, shocked.
I came out of the chamber, and David, Allan, Winchester, and two women were staring after where the queen had gone. One of the women were Lady Norfolk, an older woman who had been the queen’s lady a long while. The other were an awful young girl, a pretty thing who even after the queen stormed off were staring up at Winchester.
She turned her head to me and she smiled bright, dipping into a curtsy.
Winchester beamed, stepping forward. “My lady Marian, may I introduce Lady Margaret, daughter of the Earl of Leicester.”
“My lady Princess,” she said, reverent.
I nodded my head to her. “So Eleanor is telling people I’m her granddaughter?” I asked.
She straightened, glancing at Winchester, and I wondered if that meant he told her. “A select few, my lady.”
“Please,” Allan huffed. “She has half the minstrels in England singing of it. It’s the most purposefully worst-kept secret in Europe.”
“I’ve heard so very much about you,” Margaret said, looking at me still.
“Oh,” I said. “You have?”
“Yes,” Winchester said quick. “I told you the queen has been searching for you.”
Lady Norfolk looked fair disapproving, which were a bit of a feat since I’d only ever seen one utterly blank expression from her. Allan chuckled.
“The queen won’t hear of it,” I told them. “She doesn’t believe Prince John would hurt Richard.”
“He tried to kill you,” David said. “How is that different?”
Lady Norfolk raised her chin in a look that were a pale mimic of Eleanor. “She’s a mother,” Lady Norfolk said flat. “Not one of you understands what that means.”
I sighed, thinking of the letters in my room. Nottingham were starting to seem farther away than ever. “If she won’t help us, we have to stop Prince John on our own,” I told them.
“But you don’t know how the prince intends to act,” Winchester reminded me careful. “How can we stop something if we don’t know what’s going to happen?”
I crossed my arms. “Eleanor said something interesting—Prince John doesn’t have a tremendous amount of money. Is that true?”
“Of course not!” Allan crowed. “He’s John Lackland!”
Winchester lifted his shoulder. “He’s lord of a few holdings—Nottingham included, as you’ll remember—mostly properties that have reverted to the Crown and that he doesn’t entirely hold in his own right. He exists by his brother’s beneficence,” Winchester said. “He’ll collect money from those, which is more than many have, but no, he doesn’t have access to the royal coffers or the fortune of Aquitaine.”
“So Eleanor’s right. He needs an army if he hopes to take the crown. Even in the most peaceful ways, he’d still need men to protect his claim to the throne.”
“He needs money,” David said.
I nodded.
“But . . .” Margaret started to say something, but her eyes darted round the room and she stopped, putting her head down.
“What?” I asked her.
“Well—the money. The queen came south to start collecting the funds for the tax, but the prince went north. Within a month, he??
?ll have thousands of pounds of silver at his fingertips,” she said. “As will the queen.”
“That’s not good,” muttered Allan.
“But it doesn’t make sense to steal it as he goes,” I said, shaking my head. “He needs to raise 65,000 pounds—Eleanor won’t let a ship leave without the full amount on it.” I stopped, looking at Allan. “A ship. Of course—that would be the smartest move, to fill a ship and send it to the wrong place. Steal the ransom and use it to buy an army, not the king’s freedom.”
“And what does that change?” Eleanor said, returning slow from the hallway she left by. “Nothing. We still have the daunting task of raising this tax. We must bring the English people to the brink and then find a way to stop them falling over. If he means to steal the tax after it’s raised, that’s one thing. But we still need to raise it. And we still need to protect you,” she said, looking at me.
“So you believe me?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No. I believe John will act with pride and honor. But I recognize the temptation. I pushed his brothers to rebel against their father, after all. The night before you are crowned is the last full night of sleep you ever get—everyone who has even a loose claim will take their chance to end your reign and with it, your life. The key is not to give them an opportunity, and the only thing that I will agree upon is that this is an opportunity. But I won’t lose either of my sons to it.”
I swallowed. For now, it were enough. I nodded, once.
“But I also won’t lose my granddaughter. So I will send you to Ireland.”
“Eleanor—” I started.
She held up a hand. “No. You cannot go to France, because whether or not you’re right, John has friends in France. It’s the first place he’d turn to for armies for a rebellion. And you wouldn’t be able to hide there. I can’t get you safely to any of my daughters, so I’ll send you to Ireland. It’s close, and you can be safe there until this mess blows over.”
“Eleanor, no,” I snapped. “I’m not fleeing the country!”
Her hand fell to fold into her other. “Really. He will kill you, Marian.” Her throat worked, and she looked up, blinking fast. “Do you know how many of my children I have already buried?” she asked me, her voice a harsh whisper. “I have yet to bury a grandchild. Do not ask me to do this. Go willingly, or I will find a way to make you.”