He dropped the whip and drew his sword fast, arcing it down at me. I dropped to one knee and drew my knives, crossing them to prevent his sword from crashing into my head. I pushed him off and jumped up, twisting and striking out with one knife and the next until he jumped back. David went behind me and untied the man.
D’Oyly swung again and I twisted as David helped the man up.
Boy. He were a boy, fifteen at the most. This tyrant had been beating a boy.
I bare knew my next moves. I swung my knives fast, furious, throwing him off balance and stepping in close beside him to drive my elbow under the blade of his shoulder, and he dropped his sword. I recoiled and drove my elbow into his face, and he dropped.
A noise grew louder, over the pounding of my heart. I heard the rattling metallic stomp of armored men. I backed away from him as knights came into the city center, and the people looked terrified. Well and truly terrified.
Walking through the knights were a man without armor, his hands clasped behind his back. His cruel, sharp face twisted into a familiar smile, redness flooding into his cheeks.
My heart froze.
“Lady Leaford,” Prince John snarled, his face mottled red with anger. “How nice to see you still alive. I had heard the very worst things about your fate.”
I stood still, my knives in my hands.
“And you,” he said, looking at David. “You look familiar.”
“It’s Lady Huntingdon now, Prince John,” I told him, trying to draw his attention back to me.
That worked. His glare were sharp and heated. “You’re mistaken. Huntingdon is mine,” he growled.
“Not anymore,” I told him. “Not according to King Richard. Who also saw fit to pardon me for that . . . misunderstanding between us.”
I saw his mouth tremble, his rage bare contained. “When you tried to kill me, you mean.”
“I think you know more about trying to kill people than I do,” I said, turning my knife in my hand. “When I try, I don’t fail.”
“You’re interfering with my justice again, Marian. You have a rather nasty habit of doing that.” He lifted his shoulders. “Come along. We shall chat in private.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” David snapped, a few feet away, watching D’Oyly, who had recovered his feet, and the knights too. Watching my back, as it were.
The prince chuckled. “I only wish, my lady, that you would let my vassal continue his task.”
I glanced at D’Oyly, wiping his mouth. “His task,” I repeated.
“Yes,” Prince John said cheerful. “These people won’t pay their taxes. They need to be reminded what fate lies before them if they fail to pay.” He looked at me, and I could see his thoughts coiling behind his eyes like a snake. “Unless you feel that they should not have to pay. That they should not help bring my brother home to his throne.”
“How do you know that they can pay?” I demanded. “If they can’t pay, it’s a failure of their lord, not the people.”
D’Oyly shrank back.
“I’m trying to inspire them, my lady. Isn’t that what you’re so good at?” he sneered. “Inspiring people to act? Even when it leads to their deaths.”
Hate pounded through my heart and it made me feel overstrong.
I could kill him. I could kill him right here.
I stepped forward and halted.
But how many others would die, would be hurt, in my wake?
I looked at the people—men, women, children bare old enough to have had their first kiss—waiting to be whipped. These people didn’t need my vengeance. They needed my protection.
“I won’t let you hurt any of them.”
He laughed, and his eyes glittered. “Fine, Lady Leaford, I’ll offer you a bargain. If you are so willing to stand for the people, then you can kneel for them as well.”
Everything went silent. A knight shifted and his armor creaked with it.
“Kneel at the post, Marian, and be the martyr you seem to believe you are. Take their lashes and I won’t hurt them.”
The people kneeling on the ground looked up. The first time they had raised their heads, and they looked to see if I would take their pain away from them.
“You will not touch her,” David growled. “She is protected by the queen mother. She is the Lady of Huntingdon!”
Prince John’s smile turned into a snarl. “I cannot force it upon you, Marian,” he said, with what sounded like deep regret, “but volunteer and it is the only way I will spare their pain.”
I dropped my knives. I cast off my hat and let my hair run over my shoulder the bit that it could. People gasped—which were fair odd, since Prince John had been calling me a “she” for a long while—and I pulled off the stiff tunic.
Prince John looked angrier still.
“My lady—” David protested, gripping my arm. “You can’t—”
I threw him off. “Look at them, David. Of course I can.”
“I will take her place!” David yelled, throwing down his sword. “Punish me instead!”
“No,” Prince John snapped, glaring at me. “It is her or it is them.”
Glaring all the while at Prince John, I went over to the post and knelt. I were facing the people who were meant to be whipped instead, and they were staring at me. Staring, like I were some strange creature.
“D’Oyly,” Prince John snapped. It sounded like a command.
I heard someone moving behind me. A hand touched my back and I jumped. It caught my shirt and drew it up to my neck, leaving it to hang loose in front of me, leaving my bits covered in a small act of mercy.
There were low murmurs and noises. I weren’t sure if it were from my scars—there were a long, ragged one left by Gisbourne’s sword, from my shoulder spanning down half my back. There were others besides that I hadn’t seen in years but still felt tight when I twisted this way or that. Scars never left, even when you couldn’t see them. Maybe they were just making noise for a woman’s naked back. A noblewoman, at that.
Which never felt more like a lie than when I were kneeling in the dirt. I looked down, and saw thicker clumps of dirt, dark and wet. Blood, I imagined. Other people’s blood.
“Do it, D’Oyly!” Prince John yelled.
Nothing happened.
“No, my lord Prince.”
“I will remove you from your station,” I heard Prince John growl, low, meant for D’Oyly alone.
“You don’t have the power to do that, my lord Prince,” D’Oyly whispered, but he didn’t sound near as brave as his words.
“Michaelson!” Prince John roared, and I heard chain mail rattle forward.
“My lord Prince,” he said.
“Lash her.”
There were a long pause.
“Do it!” Prince John screamed.
“I cannot strike a noblewoman,” the knight said.
He called for another man, and I shut my eyes. I couldn’t hear the exchange, but I heard Prince John scream, “Give it to me, then!” he roared.
I turned. David launched forward, but one of Prince John’s knights held him off and David set about fighting him. Prince John took the whip from where it lay in the dirt, and he came toward me.
I stood.
“Kneel!” he screamed. “Or I will kill all of them!”
“I will sacrifice anything to protect these people from your pain,” I told him, fierce and loud. “But if you swing that whip, it’s not for the people. It’s so you can hurt me. I am not where you get to vent your childish anger. I am not weak, and I am not broken, and I will not be hurt by you. I am Lady Huntingdon. I am King Richard’s daughter, and I am lionhearted too. Get out of here and leave these people alone.”
There were no sound but wind, snapping cloaks and clothing out, pushing my hair off my shoulders. I felt like an avenging angel; I felt like the arm of God.
And I watched as, with hate in his eyes, Prince John left the city of Oxford.
CHAPTER
The knights followe
d Prince John, and Lord D’Oyly asked us to come to his castle. Tired from the road and still bleeding from the lash at my neck, I agreed, and sent David out to fetch Allan.
We’d bare made it into the castle when seven horses galloped up and Essex threw himself off his horse. He saw me and stopped, straightening. “My lady Huntingdon,” he said, looking fair relieved. “We must get you out of Oxford.”
Lord D’Oyly and I looked at each other, and I frowned at Essex. “My lord, what are you talking about?”
“Prince John is on his way here. He sent word to the queen mother that he was coming down after her attack, and her intelligence has him very close to Oxford. She fears for your safety, my lady.”
“Your attention and haste are very much appreciated,” I told him, bowing my head. “But unnecessary. Prince John has come and gone, and unfortunately he is very aware I’m alive now.”
He straightened with a frown. “You’re not harmed?”
Lord D’Oyly gave a ragged sigh. “It’s a rather long tale, my lord, if you would like to join us inside.”
I turned a little, and Essex said, “You’ve been cut. The prince did this to you?”
D’Oyly flushed, and I said quick, “Come inside. I’ll explain everything.”
Oxford Castle were large, and old, but not rich. There were none of the trappings of excess that I’d expected, which I suppose weren’t strange—D’Oyly were just a lord, and even if Oxford were rich, it were his only holding.
Unlike me. The Huntingdon holdings spanned all of Nottinghamshire and beyond. Nottingham Castle. Belvoir Castle. Haddon Hall. There were a grand old keep in Locksley called Huntingdon House.
Where Rob had grown up, naturally. I loved him, and I had the one thing that could make his happiness complete—the title he’d been denied so long ago.
Lord D’Oyly led us to a hall, small for such a thing, and called for food. He brought a woman to tend to my wound, and she drew me to a corner, for my modesty or some such thing.
Half of Oxfordshire had just seen my scarred back. I didn’t reckon I had much left to defend.
I could hear the murmurs of D’Oyly telling Essex what had happened, and once Essex looked back at me, his sharp, angry stare pointed straight at me.
He turned away a moment later.
When the woman were done with her task, I thanked her and went back to the others. I sat in a chair, and leaning back made all my muscles ache.
“Are you well, my lady?” asked D’Oyly.
“You hurt your vassals,” I told him.
His jaw went tight and muscled. “Rarely. But if necessary, if it will protect more people in the end, yes. On the scale that Prince John wanted me to—no.”
“And yet you didn’t tell him no.”
He looked at me. “I didn’t realize I could. Until you.”
I sighed. “I didn’t change anything about the tax, my lord. Or about Prince John’s right to collect it from you as your overlord.”
His shoulders rolled back a bit, and even sitting, he looked taller. “It changed something for me, my lady.”
My mouth fell into a hard line. “Good.”
Essex watched me, and looked brief at D’Oyly, and said nothing.
By nightfall, David returned, without Allan in tow.
“He’s gone,” he told me.
“You can’t find him. That’s not the same thing,” I assured him. “It isn’t as if he’s left the city.” I frowned. “Is it? You two fought over something in Glastonbury, yes?”
Color rose on his face. “Nothing relevant, my lady.”
I shook my head. He could keep his secrets; I never much enjoyed when people tried to pry mine away.
“Very well,” I said. “I want to leave at dawn, so let’s go look for him.”
David nodded, and it weren’t long before I were back in men’s clothing, covered over in black wool and leather, slipping out of the castle and into the night.
“I searched every street,” David said as we went to the town. “The only reason he wouldn’t return is if he’s hurt. I can’t find him—” he growled, stopping short.
I frowned at him. “He would limp home to great display if he were hurt. He’d live on just to let everyone fawn over him.” I shook my head. “No, if Allan’s not back, he’s got a purpose. And we won’t find him in a street.” I nodded down a dark alley and started off.
David were a moment or two behind me, hissing my name. He caught up quick, walking behind me, casting me deeper into shadow as we moved deeper into the city.
I saw warm light up ahead, and heard music even from far down the lane. We came upon the place, a break in the stone wall with a little worn wooden door. People were jumping and laughing in circles, dancing to the music pouring from a few instruments in the corner.
The door were low enough to see over, and I didn’t open it. I tucked my hat lower, looking round, feeling something tight in my chest. There were a ring of children in the center of all the dancers, doing a poor job of playing along and hopping to the right tune. I looked at the musicians—I knew Allan played a few instruments, but I didn’t have a lick of an idea what they were.
There were three men and two women—one only half of a woman, bare more than twelve I reckoned—and none of them were Allan, bright and noisy and noticeable.
Just as I nodded to David to move on, the music stopped, one instrument at a time until something with strings played by the youngest one were the last thing playing and she stopped, embarrassed. The dancers all stopped slow, rippling out from one woman standing a few feet from the gate, staring at me.
I turned away, ducking from their attention. The last thing I wanted to do were ruin their fun.
“My—my lady, isn’t it?” the woman said before I’d full gone.
Pausing on the street, I didn’t turn back.
“I was next,” she said soft. Everything else were quiet, so I heard it.
Turning back, I looked at her. Three children in different sizes—and like enough to the young one with the strings that I reckoned she were hers too—crowded near her skirts. Her mouth twisted down like she were ’bout to cry. I remembered her, kneeling in the street, like a thing. Like she weren’t a person, a mother, a wife. Like all there were to know about her were crimes that weren’t her fault.
“Come,” she told me. She came forward, opening the door and holding her hand out. “You must come in. What’s making you run these streets?” she asked.
I stepped forward, coming closer slow and halting. “My friend,” I said. “I’m looking for my friend.”
She took my hand. Hers were rough and worn, a good kind of a hand. A hand that had worked its whole life. “Who’s this friend?” she said. She nodded toward the others. “We know everyone in Oxford. We’ll find him for you.”
She brought me to a bench in the corner of the small courtyard and I sat.
“Allan a Dale,” David said for me. “He’s a—well, he’s many things, but I think minstrel is the most of them. Favors a red hat.”
“I know Allan,” a boy round my own age piped up. “Saw him not long ’go neither.”
She pointed to the door. “Fetch him, would you?”
He nodded and dashed out the door, two of his lanky fellows following behind.
“Now come,” my new friend said. “You need your strength. I can’t send you off again without a full meal and a good song.” She waved her hands like a wizard at the others, and they went to do her bidding.
Her daughter started to play again, alone for a start. Her strings made sweet notes that were made just for this moment, a breath of joy in a lifetime of hardship. The others joined in, and the sound grew full and round.
They brought me a trencher of meat and bread with a hunk of butter and hot, roasted potatoes. I started to eat slow, and she chattered while I did, telling me about her family, six children in all. She introduced them all to me, except for Emily, the one playing, and Roger, one of the boys that had run off to fetch All
an. She told me about their life—her husband were a dyer and she helped him and made a bit more on the side with washing, and Emily could get some work playing here and again. They usually made it by, but the taxes cut too deep. It were too much and they didn’t have the money.
“Lordship’s not usually so bad,” she told me soft. “We were petitioning him for something—more time, less money, something. And that prince came in right when we were doing it. He had his guards catch us all, and the next morning, there we were. The prince didn’t even come to watch his handiwork.”
“He watched,” I told her. “Somewhere. I’m sure he didn’t want to be seen, but he couldn’t have come near so quick when he saw me if he weren’t.”
“He hates you,” she said.
I nodded. “He does.”
“Mum!” yelled Roger, and he kicked the door open and twisted in, one of two boys carrying Allan with his arms strung round their necks. I stood, and David leapt over to them, taking Allan.
Allan’s head lolled forward, and he realized it were David holding him, and he leered up at him. He started to salute and David’s lip curled. He let Allan fall.
“Christ on a cricket,” Allan garbled, rolling slow in the courtyard. He saw me, rolling to sit up. “Lady thief!” he cried. “Heard they—” He laughed drunken. “Tried to whip you into shape!”
David punched him across the face.
Allan dropped like a sack of potatoes.
I crossed my arms. “Was that necessary?”
“I won’t tolerate an insult to your person,” David told me, straightening his tunic. “But no. That was more for my enjoyment.”
“Well, now you have to carry him, you know,” I told David.
He raised a grim eyebrow to me. “Worth it.”
With a sigh, I thanked everyone for their help, and stood as David hauled Allan over his shoulder.
“Wait—” the woman said to me. I didn’t know her name, and having heard the names of each of her children, I weren’t sure if I could ask now. Like I should know her already. She drew a breath, looking at me. “Is he coming back?”
Everyone were quiet, looking at me.