Tucking my growing hair up under a hat, I went down to the tavern without the boys. I just wanted time to myself, and they were growing happier with each other, even if I couldn’t much call their friendship fond.
I had every intention of sitting and eating, happy and warm in the tavern, but we were back at the ocean, and I could smell it, and Rob seemed just beyond me, mocking my thought of leaving him behind. I left the tavern and went for the water, trying to find him again. Trying to be with him in these salty half moments, trying to call up some piece of him that I could take with me.
I found the port and followed the water’s edge out along the city till it fell into big rocks with places to hide. Picking my way out over slippery black boulders in the gleam of the moon, I finally found one that weren’t too wet and had a place I could tuck into besides.
The heat were gone from my skin, but the damp were still there, and it made the night seem colder again by half. I shut my eyes and breathed it in and wished him to me.
His hand touched my face, and water welled up in my eyes but I didn’t open them, holding onto his shadow self as long as I could.
“Come back to me, Scar. I don’t understand why you won’t come to me.”
“To protect you,” I whispered. “Because I love you.”
“It’s not you that will hurt me. It’s Prince John. He’ll kill us all, Scar, just because he wants to.”
“Not if I’m not there. Not if I don’t provoke him.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“Not if I kill him first,” I told Rob, overhot and fierce.
“Then what the hell are you doing in Bristol?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I’ll kill him,” I promised Rob. “Just stay here with me a while longer.”
“I’ll never leave you,” he told me, and I felt his arms on me. “As long as you love me, I’ll be here, hidden somewhere in your heart.”
The water slipped out, and I tried to imagine his arms tighter on me, holding me tight enough to be real, wondering if those words were meant to comfort me or haunt me. “I’ll never stop loving you, Rob. Never.”
“Then I’ll always be here,” he said, brushing a kiss into my hair.
I fell asleep like that, with the rock of the ocean waves, the cold of the night and fresh bite of the wind taking me away from myself. Wrapping me up with Robin like I could keep him there. When I woke up, I thought it were to a seagull cackling good morning, but it were someone laughing.
Turning slow to not be seen, I looked around. There were two women in the water, rucking in nets in the shallows.
“I’ll buy a pound of butter,” one said.
“Just a pound?” the other said. “I’ll buy the whole cow and have cream and butter and milk for years.”
“That’s awful work,” the first said. “All that cranking and squeezing and churning.”
“Then I’ll hire someone for it. A good little lass that could use the coin.”
The first clucked. “Heavens, I wouldn’t never have a little young thing running around my husband. No good, that one.”
They both laughed at this. “Well, if our husbands were any good, we wouldn’t have our butter cow, would we?”
They laughed again. “How much do you think it will be?”
“A chest for each of us, at least. Nothing but fancy dresses and servants and—”
“As long as it buys us warm socks and a hot fire, I’ll be right grateful,” she said, and I heard them splashing in the water. “Awful cold still.”
“You’re a simple woman. I’ve always liked that about you.”
The first made a grunting noise. “As long as those men don’t get strung up—then we’ll be in a bit of a fix for those warm fires, won’t we?”
“They won’t. They’ll all look out for one another; they always do.”
Another grunt.
“Besides, it ain’t as if the queen is all that heavily guarded.”
My limbs were stiff with cold. My feet weren’t sure on the wet rocks. There were bare enough light in the sky to see by. But I didn’t wait a breath before running for the inn.
David, Allan, and I were armed to the teeth and on our horses in moments, and my horse tore ahead in a fast gallop with David behind me and Allan behind him, racing down the road from Bristol to Bridgewater Castle, where Eleanor might have been.
There were a spot that were perfect for it. There had been a portion of the road that went through a thick forest with grand trees, and I’d even had the stupid thought that it reminded me of our ambush spots in Nottingham.
We broke into the dark of the forest and were blind for a moment, but I didn’t slow down. I heard the clash of weapons up ahead, and my heart seized as I knew, sudden and sure, that there were at least one more thing than Rob that I could lose, and she were an old white-haired lady that I never wanted to love.
I saw the knights in full fight, and a man in plain clothing reaching into the carriage and obviously scrabbling with something. More than half of him were outside the carriage, and without thinking much, I leapt off my horse and slammed into him, gripping his waist to tear him from the carriage.
It were enough, and my weight pulled his off and we fell, landing hard in the dirt, side by side. He groaned and started to get off me, and another man grabbed me up from the ground.
I stabbed him in the gut before he could do the same to me, and he let me go. The man in the dirt were starting to rise and I kicked his head. He went still, and a flashing arc of a sword came down on me. I hit it away with my knife, but the man cuffed my head with his free hand, swinging the sword round again.
Cutting a quick stripe on his hand made him drop the sword, and I stepped on his foot and slammed my elbow to his head. He dropped, and I took a deep stride to get back to the carriage, and whatever new assailant were there.
A man were trying to pull Eleanor out of the carriage, and she were hitting him with her stick but didn’t have enough space to get a good swing off. He backhanded her, and she made a soft cry, a weak hurt noise.
I’d never heard Eleanor make any kind of sound like that.
I should have thought of those women I heard talking. Wives. Family. Children.
But I didn’t. I jumped forward, hooking my arm round his shoulders, and I slit his throat. He fell back quick, spraying me with blood.
Eleanor met my eyes, and hers were wide and bluer than ever. She nodded once, and I shut the door.
“Margaret,” she told me, pointing to the open door on the other side of the carriage.
I growled out a curse. I hopped up on the chests in the back and looked out.
There were blue cloth in the woods, and I followed the flash of bright. Margaret were fighting hard, but her small hands weren’t doing much as the man covered her mouth and tried his best to uncover the rest of her. Her gown were torn and she were sobbing under his hand.
She were making enough noise to cover my approach, and I came fast as I could without him turning. I kicked my boot up between his legs and he howled, dropping her. She screamed and pulled away from him, and he grabbed her arm.
“Don’t you touch her!” I screamed at him, fisting my half hand as best I could and slamming it into his face.
The pain of the punch rushed up my arm. It were the good kind of pain, the simple kind that made sense.
I hit him again.
You can’t quite take a punch, Scar, John told me once.
I hit him again.
You’re no good for punching, Rob told me.
What they never said were that they were the ones meant to be punching.
They were meant to be beside me, punching while I planned, strong-arming while I cut.
A team. A band. Complete.
Arms came round me, but they weren’t my bandmates. They were from Lady Margaret, and she were a sobbing, shaking little thing, and I couldn’t lift my hand.
I looked down. The man were breathing—just, but it were there, in t
he bubbles of blood round his mouth.
Sagging against a tree, I hugged her tight.
We didn’t go on to Bristol. We went to Glastonbury, one of the oldest abbeys in England. Maybe the world; it were the oldest place I’d ever heard of. The whole party were rushed into the big stone walls fast, and I abandoned my horse to stay with Eleanor in the carriage. Margaret were sniffling and couldn’t much stop shaking, and Lady Norfolk were trembling but grim-faced as ever. Margaret had let go of most of me, but she still clutched my hand like it were a holy relic.
I’d gotten blood on her. My hand were still bleeding, dripping into the carriage, and God only knew where else I were bleeding from. I watched my fist drip. It were easier than seeing a splinter of fear in Eleanor’s blue eyes. It were easier than seeing this girl treat me like a savior.
We were all hushed and quiet as we were given rooms, and food, and a bath. Eleanor bathed first, and we all attended her. Or tried. The first thing I touched, I stained with blood, and Lady Norfolk pushed me back.
So I watched. Sitting in the stone sill of a window, I breathed, and I watched over them. The bleeding on my hand slowed, and no one spoke as they brushed Eleanor’s hair—so much longer than I thought it were, since I’d only ever seen her styled and pinned up—and put her safe into fresh clothes even as the purple on her face bloomed outward like it were reaching for me.
“You,” Lady Norfolk indicated, pointing to the bath.
I shook my head.
“My lady Princess,” she insisted.
“I’m not a princess,” I told her, my voice cracking on the word. “And I’ve the most blood and dirt. The water will be ruined after I’m in it. Go.”
She gave me a sharp nod and took her place in the bath, then Margaret. I saw scratches on her body that stung her in the water, and I found myself baring my teeth.
Ruin. Ruin were all around me, and I couldn’t stop it none. I brought it to me like I were calling it down from the sky.
Finally it were my turn, and Lady Norfolk and Lady Margaret helped peel the clothes off me. I were tired and broken, and I felt beyond shame, so I let them do it. They poured a bucket of hotter water into the bath, and when I sat in it, a hundred pains and aches stung to life.
They set to me, Margaret on one side and Lady Norfolk on the other, scrubbing me clean, taking the muck from the wounds well enough to make water run out my eyes. A shadow came over my face and I saw Eleanor, grim and solemn, kneel down behind me.
She rubbed something into my hair that smelled like Nottingham in springtime and scrubbed her hands through my hair. She rinsed it through with water, gentle and slow.
A brush touched my temple, grazing over the skin before it slid back into my hair. Water dripped down my face faster.
Margaret scooted closer, wiping my face with her cold fingers. I shut my eyes and a sob were racked out of me, and Eleanor kept brushing my hair as Margaret leaned forward and put her cheek to mine, letting me cry.
I had taken her attacker, and she took my tears. It were an uncommon kindness, and I didn’t know what to do other than hold on to her and take their gift.
CHAPTER
We didn’t have any of the ceremony befitting the Queen of England. The monks all came to pray over Eleanor, and Eleanor herself went to all of her knights and kissed their hands in gratitude for what they’d done for her. She kissed Allan and David too. She had lost one of her men and made arrangements for him.
She sent messengers out to tell of the incident, and at my insistence, to call for more knights and a separate party to see the silver she had back to London. It would take a few days, but I refused to let her leave until she had more men attending her, and she had only to glance at the wrapped body of her fallen knight to agree with me.
David and Allan stood by me, silent and true. When Eleanor returned to her rooms and asked to take food there, I nodded to them.
“I’ll stay with the queen tonight,” I told them. “Will you lot be able to hold your own with the knights?”
David frowned. “My lady, I am a knight.”
Allan slapped his chest. “We’ll be fine, my lady. I know what you mean.”
“I think she meant that I will have to spend half my time looking out for you,” David grumbled, and I smiled at him.
Allan moved, making some promise of a song if an instrument could be found, and David took a breath and let it out, looking at me. I saw his hand move, like he would have liked to touch me, and then thought better of it. “I’m sorry I failed you, my lady.”
I looked up. “Failed me?”
His eyes were on my hands, and they glanced over my face, where there were a bright bruise ringed with scrapes and cuts. “You were hurt. I should have protected you. I treated you like a man, like a warrior, and I shouldn’t have—”
“We both protected the queen. That’s the important part.”
He shook his head. “You’re a princess. You’re meant to be protected.”
“Not above the queen. And besides, I can protect myself, David.”
He frowned deeper at this. “I’m very sorry you have to, my lady.”
I didn’t know what to answer. I didn’t have to fight—I loved fighting. No—love—that word weren’t right. Not now, not since love meant something hot and boundless fixed in Robin’s gaze. I understood fighting. I remembered the dark days in London when I were a girl, the long trek down there, when my sister and I waited for people to save us. They never came. Later, in Nottingham, I remembered the fear that had rushed through me, seeing Gisbourne again, wondering if he could hurt me and the people I loved as easily as he had when I were littler. And I remembered the power, the hope, of teaching Missy Morgan how to hold a knife like I might save her some of the fear I’d been through.
I could never be happy waiting for David to save me. I had been frightened before, and now I couldn’t stand to give into that fear, to let it take me and rule me and keep me. And so I did what I had to do.
By the time words formed in my mouth, he were gone. I went back to Eleanor’s rooms, and my stomach twisted at the sight of the food. I ate a little bread, but it felt ashy and dry in my mouth.
“Ladies,” Eleanor said. I didn’t even notice her gesture, but it seemed a clear command enough that the two women rose without a word and left the room.
I were sitting on a padded bench, in a dress—the ladies hadn’t had much on hand in the way of men’s clothing when we bathed—and facing the fire. Eleanor stood and sat beside me, but the opposite way, so our legs were pressed together but I were looking into flame and she were looking at the cold night of the English countryside.
“My girl,” she murmured. “You were fearsome today.”
I shut my eyes. “Yes.”
“I have been through battles, Marian.” I turned to her a bit, the profile of her white stone face bright. “I rode in the Second Crusade—did you know that?”
“I thought it were a story.”
“Was,” she corrected. She shook her head. “No. I rode. No one touched me, and I swung my sword and carved a path through men. Through flesh.” Her eyes shut. “It was gruesome, to say the least. The blood—I still carry that blood on me, some days.”
I looked at my hands, and they were bandaged, clean, and if anything, a little pink from scrubbing and pain. I’d washed off the blood of men’s lives.
“I wasn’t very good at it. It made it easy to never do it again. I was making a statement, trying to inspire our men. And I did—oh, I did. And I learned more about what sends men to war. What keeps them alive when they’re there.”
I knew she looked at me then, but I looked to the fire instead of her.
“They’re fighting for something. I’ve made a life of convincing them they’re fighting for me, but that’s rather beside the point. A fighting man will die without something to fight for.”
“And a woman?” I asked her.
She drew a slow breath. “Everyone needs something—someone—to fight for
, Marian.”
I turned my eyes to her slow, and she met mine with a sad smile like she knew what I were about to say. “I’m not going to Ireland,” I told her soft.
She smoothed my hair back over my shoulder, nodding with a heavy sigh.
“There is no safety to be had,” I told her. “Death has walked this far with me as a shadow just behind me, and all I’ve ever had, chained in a dungeon or hiding in the forest, is my ability to fight. To never give up. To never let this awful world win. You told me to protect the things I love, Eleanor, and I will do that the only way I know how. In Nottingham, with Rob, with a knife in my hand. I will try to stay out of Prince John’s notice as long as I can manage, but he will find out I’m alive. And when he does, I will do everything I can to stop him.”
She nodded. “Then there are things you can do. You’re a noblewoman, now—not an earl in your own right, but you control an earldom. You’re one of the highest ladies in the land, and not so far below John himself. You must show the nobles that—and make them see that John’s retaliation can strike them as well.”
I frowned. “Eleanor, if I represent an earldom, I have dependents, don’t I? Vassals. People who are being asked to pay the tax. Who is collecting it from them? Was this land taken from someone else? Do they know?”
She glanced out the window. “It was taken from the Crown’s own coffers, my dear. It was one of the lands John oversaw.”
My eyes widened. “My father gave me Prince John’s toys to play with, and he didn’t think that would stir up trouble?”
“Nottingham,” she said, looking back at me. “He gave you Nottingham. You’re the Lady of Huntingdon now.”
A shiver ran over me. “Rob’s title,” I whispered.
She nodded.
My eyes shut and I shook my head. Rob had never betrayed that title; he had grown up as the heir to Huntingdon, and he’d returned from the Crusades to find his father dead and his title stolen from him, but he had ever acted as the earl. Protecting his people the way he were meant to. For me to have that title now—well, God had a very strange sense of humor. “You would have let me get to Ireland before I ever thought to read that paper.”