Lion Heart (22 page)

We all ate dinner in the Great Hall, sharing whatever we could for food, but we were running low. I sat by Rob, our food spread on a linen on the floor. There weren't near enough tables to seat all the people we needed to feed, and I never had a problem sitting on the ground.

Rob took my hand, and I looked at him, watching him, as he unwrapped the bandage on one, looking to see how the cuts were healing.

I wanted to pull away. If he were going to touch me, I didn't want it to be to check a wound, some necessary thing. I wanted it to mean something more.

That didn't mean I'd rather him not touch me at all, though.

“We should hunt tomorrow,” I told him, eating a bit of cheese. “We don't have any meat left.”

He looked at me, the corner of his mouth rising. “Guess we don't have to worry about a lord catching us poaching.”

“They're royal forests, not shire forests. The only person who has the right to truly punish someone for poaching is the king.”

He flipped my hand over, stroking his thumb along the beating vein in my wrist, making the blood rush faster. “Then we'll hunt happily. Everything seems easier in the forest, anyway,” he said, and his voice were rough.

“I don't know if I can shoot anymore,” I told him soft.

“You haven't been gone that long,” he told me, brushing my wrist again.

Wondering if two could play such a game, I took his hand and traced my fingertips over his palm, edging one finger, then the next, then the next. He sucked in a hard breath. “Not because of the time,” I admitted, unearthing my half hand from where I'd hidden it in my skirts.

He took this hand, unwrapping it and really looking at it for the first time. The scarred stumps were discolored, almost black, and tough and rough to the touch. Hard. Flipping it over, the palm were red and scraped up from the rope. He lifted my hand, kissing a bit of the
uninjured pad at the base of my thumb. “Your hands have seen far too much pain. But if you want, I'll teach you to shoot like I taught you the first time.”

I pulled away from him with a gasp. “
The first time
!” I yelped, outraged. “You never!”

He grinned. “You couldn't shoot a horse's ass when I found you,” he boasted. “I taught you everything you know.”

“You taught me some things,” I said, lowering my voice. He raised his eyebrows and leaned closer to me. I pushed him back with a grin. “And none of them have anything to do with weaponry.”

My eyes dropped to his mouth, and lingered there for a long breath.

He sighed and stood. “Scarlet, we should—I should—” He stopped, and he shook his head.

I stood as well. “Rob, I shouldn't have walked off this afternoon.”

He looked at me, waiting for me to speak.

I lifted my shoulders. “I know you were trying to say something reasonable, but all I heard—” I stopped, looking down, and he stepped closer to me. “All I heard was that you don't want to marry me anymore.”

He looked at me, meeting my eyes in that way that made me feel strange things sparking like kindling inside of me. He glanced away, looking round the hall.
“Come,” he said, holding out his hand. “I'd rather not speak about this here, but there is much to say.”

My chest felt tight as I looked at his hand.

“And none of it has to do with me not
wanting
to marry you, Scar,” he told me, his voice a low, private rumble. “Come to my chambers, and we can discuss it all.”

I nodded, putting my hand in his.

He held my bandaged hand and brought me up through the castle. When I thought we'd continue up the stairs, he started tugging me down the hall. “You don't stay in the lord's chambers?” I asked. They were the nicest rooms, where Prince John stayed when he were here.

He shrugged. “No. I couldn't much stand the thought of him, and besides . . . ,” he said, trailing off as he tugged me down the hall. As we grew closer to the room and he smiled broader, I felt the blood running out of my face. “I wanted to stay in the only room that reminded me of you. With your things in it, no less, so I could pretend like any day you'd appear again.”

He loosed my hand to open the door, and my heart were pounding at the thought of going into that room, like it could bring Gisbourne back to life, like he would be there, putting his hands on me again.

Rob turned back to me and frowned, taking my hand. “Scar, we don't—”

I pulled away, so hard when he let me go I hit the wall and jerked with pain as my back hit rock. I shrank from him.

“Scarlet!” he said, frowning and confused.

I could bare breathe, and Rob came to me, standing before me, hesitant to touch me.

Like he thought it were him I didn't want to be touched by, like he couldn't see Gisbourne's ghostly hands reaching out for me, grasping at me.

“Locksley!” Winchester shouted down the hall. “Have you—Marian! Come quick, Bess is asking for you.”

I pulled round Rob. “Bess?” I asked. “What's wrong?”

He grinned. “She's having the baby.”

My eyes went wide. “What am I meant to do?” I demanded, panicked.

He chuckled. “I think she wants a friend there, Marian.”

With little idea what I were doing, I went. Maybe to run from telling Rob so many truths, and maybe because even if I weren't sure I were yet, I wanted to be Bess's friend. I wanted to protect that baby from the moment it were alive in the world.

I rushed back to the room I'd left her in. Much were outside, his arms crossed, looking fair tortured and grim. “God, Scarlet . . . ,”
he started, shaking his head.

Jumping forward, I kissed his cheek. “I'll take care of her,” I told him. It were a silly promise to make—I didn't know the first thing about women and babies and care. But I promised it to him because he needed to hear something from his friend.

I heard her yell, and Much flinched. I opened the door and went in. Women were in there already, four of them, piling linens and getting water and doing it all without a word.

“Scarlet!” she wailed, and I froze, terrified.

She held her hand out to me from the bed where they'd moved her around, and said my name again. I lurched forward, crawling on the bed to sit beside her. She grabbed my wrist and I grabbed hers, bound together, strong and linked.

“It hurts,” she sobbed against me. “No one says it hurts this much.”

“No,” one of the women told her, patting her knee. “They all forget once they have the babe. It's a quick mess of pain for a lifelong joy, my girl.” She smiled. “Besides, the pains will get much, much worse. We're still early on.”

The worst of the pain passed, and Bess curled against my chest, crying free. “Damn him,” she whispered. “Damn him for leaving me like this. Leaving me alone to do this.”

I squeezed her wrist harder. “You're not alone. You have a whole family outside that door. And in,” I added, looking at our hands. “He left you with a whole damn family.”

She kept on crying, but she nodded, and I reckoned that were good enough.

“You've got a long while to go, Bess,” the woman near her knees told her. I reckoned she were the midwife. “Rest if you can between the pains. And you—” she said, nodding to me. “Don't let go of her hand. When she needs to squeeze, she needs to squeeze hard.”

I nodded, like this were a solemn duty. It were, to me.

The midwife passed me cloths soaked in cool water, and I patted them on her neck, her forehead, cooling the sweat. She relaxed a little, tangled against me. “Hush,” I said to her. “Rest. I'm not leaving you.”

Bess nodded.

I never knew how long a birth could take. How much punishment it gave the mother. Bess labored for hours and hours, such pain that she screamed and cried and I were surprised there were still water in her to cry and sweat. The pains started with minutes between them and grew closer until it never broke, just kept coming and coming and coming. She cried and hurt so much that I cried with her. It weren't my arm—though that were red
and sore in her grasp—it were the strangeness of it.

Pain never meant much to me. It weren't the beginning or the end—it were an ever-moving mark that never served a purpose, never bore a reason, never changed things except to make people more afraid.

But this pain—I cried with her and I cursed God for His cruelty. I thought He meant to take Bess from us—surely this amount of pain weren't natural, weren't expected, even though the midwife stayed calm throughout. I thought Bess were dying, and I were meant to hold her hand and watch because Death and I knew each other so well.

But then the baby started to come, and the pain started to mean something. Every push Bess gave became an inch closer to new life as the little one struggled to get out of her body.

The head came first, and it were a quick thing to pull it out once the shoulders appeared, like a strange and humbling magic, from Bess's body. The midwife caught the baby in clean linen, toweling off blood and mess. She cleaned the face, and the tiny eyes didn't open and the mouth didn't move.

“Sarah?” Bess whined. “Sarah?”

“Hush,” the midwife said. Holding the baby in the linen, she swatted the rump.

And the tiny, perfect thing screamed. It screamed so loud and hard its lips trembled and shook.

The midwife laughed. “Bess, you have a beautiful, healthy baby girl.”

Bess burst into tears as the midwife passed the bundle up. There were a fleshy cord tying the two together, and the midwife motioned to me. “Perhaps you and your knives could be of service?” she asked.

Silent and wide-eyed, I moved forward, away from Bess, my body hot and sweaty where she'd been pressed against me. I drew one of my knives, burning it in the fire to make the wound clean. I felt utterly strange at having a weapon so close to a brand new thing, and the midwife showed me where to cut.

In a breath it were done, and the tether that bound the two of them together became something less easy to see, less easy to touch. But it were there nonetheless, as she stared at her daughter and her daughter quieted, looking back up at her through bare-open eyes.