Lady Thief: A Scarlet Novel (9 page)

“I protect my own.
My
name. Nothing else matters.”

Turning my hand, I looked at the new spots of blood on the bandages. “Damn fine job of protecting me you’re doing,” I told him.

He caught my chin and dragged me up, looking full in my eyes. His were dark, like oil skating over midnight water, and looking in them felt like falling into black. “Are you mine, Marian?”

My body set to trembling. “You know that answer, Gisbourne.”

He let me go, looking away, the black waters drying up. “I do. And yet, you came. With bruises on your face, when all of Sherwood defends you.”

“For the annulment.”

His lip curled. “Naturally. And yet I wonder if it wasn’t your sweet Huntingdon who has been dishonoring you the same way I’m wont to do.”

“Rob wouldn’t
never
raise his hand to me. Rob wouldn’t never hurt me,” I said, my mug hot and my blood running fast. “Rob loves me more than he loves his self.” It were all I could manage to say the words clear and true.

My eyes set to leaking and I went for the door, near knocking a servant with a tray of ale. I passed her and bare made it another bend in the hall before my mug burst with water. I ran.

I ran through the snow. I made it to the gates, to the towering walls of stone what kept me from Sherwood, from Rob, from the forest that kept some shadow wraith of Scarlet while Marian were here and skirted and chained. And I stopped.

“My lady?” called a knight, coming close to me. “My lady, it’s freezing. Allow me to see you back,” he said.

He reached for my arm, and I whipped away from him. “Don’t touch me,” I told him.

Much’s words rang in my ears:
you never give up
. It seemed like a curse more than anything.

If it were true, and Gisbourne were set to be the winner before the competition even began, then I weren’t sure what I could do to stop him being sheriff. I didn’t have a plan, much less a second plan.

All I had were fear, and worry, and faith. Faith that when the time came, I would know what to do.

My feet were cold and heavy as they climbed back up through the baileys. When they stopped, I were in a dark, cold room of stone. I moved past the pews like a ghost and fell onto the kneelers by the dais in the old chapel.

It didn’t seem right to cry while you prayed. It seemed selfish to talk to God in such misery. My only sister had died so long ago. My band were in a forest that didn’t feel like mine anymore. My love were kept from me by an awful ring on my finger, and it seemed God were the only one left to cry to.

I went back to Gisbourne’s room after night fell. He weren’t there; I had passed the main hall and knew most of the gathered court were there to feast with the prince. I felt like a shadow in the halls, and it weren’t something I could stand.

I searched the room for my knives, but I couldn’t find where the lady servant hid them. I reckoned Gisbourne had a hand in that. Course, it weren’t hard to figure out where he kept his money, either, and I took a fair bit of that and stashed it behind the shutter where the lady servant couldn’t strip it from me.

Fetching new linen wrappings from the dry storage, I peeled the old ones off my hand and tossed them in the fire. It were bleeding a fair bit, the stick that had set it broken. I used the fire poke to hack off a bit of a fireplace log and set that in its place. My hand were double-thick and raw and sore as anything.
Cradling it to me, I curled up in the chair by the fire with one of the furs from the bed and went to sleep. He were a loon if he thought I’d be sleeping in the bed with him.

Gisbourne slammed into the room late and well drunk. I woke but didn’t open my eyes none. I stayed quiet and still as I felt him loom over me, blotting into dark the light of the fire.

He didn’t touch me. I heard noises, and him moving away, then the bed creaked and the curtains rushed over the bar.

I opened my eyes. His clothes were strewn on the floor, and the bed were covered over with drapes. I shut my eyes again, clutching my hand to my heart, trying to remember what all this hurt were for.

Waking early seemed the best way to skirt round him. I tried to put on my own things but it were damn difficult and I had to call for the lady servant. I bid her hush and do it quiet, and she obeyed me.

It would be a few hours yet before Gisbourne rose, and it felt like the closest I’d get to freedom for a long stretch. I retrieved the purse and went for the marketplace.

Even the market had changed. Nobles were still arriving, trailing behind the prince in a progress, and with them came merchants and sellers of every sort. The market were jostling and full, and slipping into the people put me at ease.

I bought knives from a merchant I liked that most days were up in Leicester. I got two sets of cheap ones for the coin
I’d filched, and as I were paying and the merchant turned, I caught a wrist with his fingers around a blade hilt.

“Don’t,” I warned soft, my eyes flicking up to the man who owned the wrist.

His face flickered into a grin, and with a quick twist from him I were a step away from the merchant’s shop, held tight against the thief.

“Can’t you let me have my fun?” he asked, his Irish brogue low in my ear as I aimed my knife to drive in his thigh. “Scarlet?”

I stopped before I stabbed him, wriggling out of his paws. I turned and looked at him—tall and shift-footed, with too-long hair and too-bright eyes—not a lick of which were known to me. “I don’t know you.”

He swept into an awful proper bow. “Allan a Dale, my lady thief.”

Tucking my new knives into their proper places, I frowned at him. “You know me?”

“I came up in London behind your legend. And still it grows,” he told me, tossing me an apple from a stand. He waved me forward. “Walk with me?”

“Dangerous prospect,” I said, but I did, and I bit the apple. “I miss London every now and a bit.”

“Filthy, pest-ridden, hard-scrabble, beautiful city,” he said, grinning.

“But how did you know me?”

He looked cut. “A knife-wielding lady who cut off her own
hair to fight a thief taker? There aren’t many of you in the world, my lady.”

I snorted. “Don’t have to call me lady, Allan.”

“Dressed like that I think I do.” He cast about in the marketplace. “So where is Robin Hood?”

“Where he ought,” I said. “With his people.” We passed a shanty of a house on the edge of the marketplace, and two children were there, filthy and still, watching all the people go by.

Frowning, I turned back to the nearest bakers stall and gave the rest of my coin for bread. “You’re
paying
for things?” Allan said.

Lifting my shoulders, I went back toward the children. “Not my coin, so that ain’t quite so.”

He laughed. I gave a loaf to the two children and quick enough others came, and Allan were quick to take bread from my stack and rip it apart to spread round. “I’ve heard this is what you do,” he said. “Stealing to feed people.” His head went to the side. “It’s so … strange.”

“It’s what nobles do,” I said bitter. “Prince John feasting every night—he’s taking the game and the crops from the people of the shire, putting them to starve in winter. Least I ain’t stealing to feed myself.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “He’s stealing to feed his ego, not his belly. It hasn’t been so well tended these days.”

“His ego?”

Allan kept the last bit of bread for himself, and with the
food gone, the children went too. He nodded, chewing. “You didn’t hear?”

I frowned. “I ain’t much for gossip.”

He stopped, swallowed, and then did a turn with a tuck of his cap, winking for show. “This is the royal court, fair thief. It lives on gossip, perception, and hearsay.” His hands spread wide. “Let me spin you a tale, then.”

He bowed and I crossed my arms.

With a shrug, he stood. “Well, when Richard left for the Holy Crusade, he kicked John to France. Told him to stay out of his country while he was away, and named his wee nephew his heir. Because God knows, Richard knows how to steal a crown—it was taught to him in the womb, so they say. Eleanor of Aquitaine herself incited her sons in rebellion against their father. And if he didn’t learn violence from her, then maybe from the Devil that bore them all.”

“Devil?” I asked.

“Oh aye, you haven’t heard that one either? Richard loves to boast of his Devil’s blood, begat when his ancestor wed a serpent.”

My eyes rolled. “Christ, you’re a fool.”

“Don’t let a few silly truths muddle up a good story,” he told me sharp.

I looked Heavenward, but there weren’t no help there. “What’s this about John’s ego?” I reminded.

He frowned. “Can’t appreciate a decent yarn. Something wrong in your head, Lady Scar. Richard kicked John out of
England, and the bishops were bickering as bishops are wont to do, and Eleanor petitioned for John to come back. So Richard allows it, right, and John’s been setting up his own royal court outside of the bishops meant to rule in Richard’s stead. The two courts have been rising, both powerful, and fighting each other in petty ways. So Richard sends in the Archbishop from Rouen to keep the peace—and knock John’s legs out. Prince John makes his stand and he’s expecting everyone to rally to him, but they don’t. They keep Richard’s orders and leave John. So John runs north at Mummy’s command and is trying to win back the people’s hearts.”

I gawped at him. “So it’s true, then? He wants to change things around here?”

Allan laughed. “He wants … to make England his very own high-priced whore. He wants to feel loved without ever caring what it takes to earn the real thing. A little coin, a little bread, and watch England do her merry dance.”

My shoulders lifted. “So long as the whore is paid and eating, what’s the difference?”

He tossed his apple core onto the street. “Ask the whore.”

We were near the edge of Nottingham, and I saw the market and the castle beyond in one direction. I saw forest in the other, and my heart ached so fierce I almost set off for it, like wading into the ocean with no hope of swimming for distant shores. Allan were talking—for a thief he yapped an amount I could
bare fathom—and I thought how easy it would be to just step over the road and into the forest.

“Scarlet!” he yelped, grabbing my dress and yanking me back as a carriage thundered past.

Landing on my backside, I stared up at the blue coach, hung with gold and the royal seal.

“You don’t want to be crushed by the Queen Mum,” he told me, giving me a hand up.

“That’s Eleanor of Aquitaine?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Her carriage, at least.”

“Scarlet,” said another voice, and this one were farther. The dust from her carriage cleared and Rob were there, looking dark and shadowed and haunted.

My blood ran fast to beating and my mouth hung open. I fair thought I’d know what to say to him, but I didn’t.

“Don’t tell me you’re Robin Hood,” Allan said, crossing his arms. “I thought you’d be taller.”

Robin strode across the road, stepping close to me, so close Allan weren’t even in my world anymore. I blinked and stared at him. Good Lord I couldn’t look at him but for thinking he held everything in my heart. It were a terrible power to keep over me.

“Who are you?” Robin asked, looking to Allan.

“Allan a Dale,” he said. “You sure you’re her man, because I’ll tell you, the stories I hear put you at about seven foot tall.” He paused, but I didn’t look to see his face. “And the stories I
tell
have you much more game for a laugh.”

“Allan,” I said, breathing in the smell only Rob had, of pine and ash and ocean. “Go now.”

“My lady,” he said, and that were the last of him.

Rob’s eyes were fierce and hard and they glittered down at me. “Please explain in some small measure, Scarlet.”

“Allan? He’s a thief, from London. Kindred soul,” I said.

“Gisbourne.”

My eyes shut. “Rob, I had to.”

“No, you didn’t. You told me you would never go back to him. You told me you understood that he would kill you. And what is wrong with your hand? Is it broken? You went to him with a broken hand?”