Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (2 page)

At first Etty could hardly bear the thought, but then she felt anger start to burn like a dragon in her chest. If her father thought he was going to put her in that cage, he could think again. Not a moment longer would she sit still for his tyranny. Ettarde tugged against Rowan's hand.
Let's go! Please?

But Rowan did not respond. Rowan lay there like an outlaw girl carved of wood. And in a moment Etty saw why. As the men stepped back, their work completed, she saw that the cage was not meant for her after all. Or not exactly. With a shock to the heart of her heart, Etty saw that there was already someone in it.

A woman.

A lady, rather. Delicate. Slender.

Barefoot. And bare-legged, wearing only a muslin chemise ripped off at her knees. Hugging her own bare shoulders in the springtime chill. Shivering.

Long hair the color of tarnished silver flowing down her back.

A perfect, pale, symmetrical face much like Ettarde's own.

Still mouth. Shadowed eyes.

At her first glimpse, Etty felt her whole body clench around the sudden yearning pain in her heart. She wanted to cry out like a baby.

N
o fire,” Rowan ordered.

“But my dear Rowan,” complained Lionel, “they won't see it. There's rock all around.” The Rowan Hood band sat within a cup of massive stone, sheltered by an encircling grove.

Etty listened as the others within the rowan hollow talked, but she could not speak, could not react.

“They might see the smoke,” said Rowan. She was right. Fountain Dale lay not much more than a furlong away.

“But it's twilight! They won't see smoke at night!”

“Then they'll see the glow on the crags. No fire.”

Etty felt as if she were watching and listening from a great distance. Even though she huddled shoulder to shoulder with the others around a sweetwater spring that had not failed all winter, even here, with her friends, she felt alone. Shock hazed her like mist that would not rise, clung to her like the odor of swamp water.

“No fire, no supper,” said Lionel, pouting his babyish mouth, widening his baby blue eyes to look pathetic. “And what if I starve to death before morning?” Like his gigantic height, Lionel's prodigious appetite was a joke among them. By his soft sideward glance, Etty knew he was trying to make her smile, but she couldn't.

“Cold venison,” Rowan said.

“And not even cresses to go with it.”

“Poor wee laddie. No, no cresses. And no singing, either.” Rowan gave Lionel a severe look with laughter hidden behind it. “Yet somehow you
will
survive.”

Always the members of the Rowan Hood band joked among themselves, no matter how hard times were—and times had been very hard this past winter. They had joked about not being able to wash without perishing of cold. That had been harder than hunger for Etty, not being able to keep herself clean and dainty, but the others had helped her bear it. They had joked about the fleas and lice that feasted upon their dirty bodies. They had joked about hunger and cold. Joking warmed the cold and defied the rain.

Or, in this case, the reign of King Solon the Red, too close at hand.

Rowan added, “They will be sending out scouts. We must take care. No one is to go anywhere alone.”

“Especially not Etty,” said Lionel, not joking any longer as he turned to Ettarde. “My dear lady, don't even walk into the brush by yourself.”

Any other time she would have grumbled at him, “I'm not your dear lady!” Or she would have told him she could relieve herself without his comment or assistance, thank you. But she felt too fogged to reply.

Rowan said, “The whole time we were hiding behind that hazel bush, I was dreading that one of them might come over and pee on us.”

Laughter. But Etty could not laugh.

“Shhh!” With a visible effort Rowan quieted. “We have to think.” Her glance caught on the wolf-dog who lay panting and grinning atop the boulders, and she focused on him with rueful affection. “I don't know what to do about Tykell,” she said, mostly to herself. “On the one hand, when he's around, he is our best guard. He can provide Etty with an escort that will not offend her delicacy.” Rowan smiled, but once again Etty could not answer her smile. Rowan continued, “But on the other hand, when he's wandering, he may venture to Fountain Dale. . . .”

Rook spoke up. “The forest is vast. We should move.”

At the sound of the wild boy's low, gruff voice, everyone turned. Even Tykell ceased his panting to listen. Rook spoke seldom, always briefly, and often with wisdom. Leave the rowan hollow. Move to somewhere else in Sherwood Forest. Leave Fountain Dale far behind until the danger was past. Yes.

No.
Violently Etty shook her head. Her sight blurred.

She heard Rowan say, “Etty?”

She hid her face in her hands, longing for the relief of tears, but her eyes felt like hot stones; she could not cry.

As if sensing the presence of a warm ghost, she felt Rowan kneel in front of her. As lightly as doves, Rowan's hands settled one on each side of Etty's head, nesting there like—like a blessing. Rowan, with the blood of
aelfe,
forest spirits, in her veins—even her touch had a healing power.

Etty felt strengthened enough to lift her head and sob. “My mother! He's put my mother in a cage!” Tears stung her eyes. She had not expected ever to see her gentle lady mother again. Such a reunion should have been the happiest of miracles. But no, her father had to have his wrongheaded way. So now this.

Without moving her hands from Etty's head, her grave face only inches away, Rowan said, “I know.”

“He's making her suffer to bait me!”

“Shhh. Keep your voice down. They'll hear you.”

Etty lowered her voice only slightly. “I don't care what they do. We have to save her.”

Rook said, “No. We have to save
you.
”

Etty jerked her head away from Rowan's touch to turn and glare at Rook. Hot and black, like coals, his eyes glittered back at her from under his shaggy black hair.

Woods colt, she wanted to snap at him, do you even
have
a mother? But Etty's mother had trained her to be a princess, calm and sweet and always in control of herself, behaving with ladylike decorum no matter what. Not very practical rules for an outlaw girl . . . yet, thinking of her mother, Etty forced herself to speak softly. “You cannot save me by making me betray my first loyalty.”

“Your first loyalty should be to the band,” Rook said.

“No.” Rowan gentled Etty's hair again. “We love our mothers first, Rook. Even Robin would tell you the same, I think.” Rowan settled back into her place against the stones.

Lionel said, “Ettarde.” He spoke like the lord's son he was. Etty turned to him.

Lionel said quietly, “Etty, your mother is being humiliated, I know, but how is she in need of rescue? She is not being harmed.”

Cabbagehead,
Etty thought, taking a deep breath to keep from shouting at him. Between clenched teeth she said, “Can't you see that she is out in the cold in only her shift—”

“I have not seen her at all.”

He truly did not understand? “Well, she is.”

“We don't know that. Perhaps he has taken her in now.”

“You don't know my father,” Etty said.

“True.”

“He will leave her out there and he will starve her.” Etty remembered what her father had done to her, his daughter and his only living child, after he had arranged for her to marry Lord Basil but she had refused. He had locked her up to starve also. Not in a cage. He had imprisoned her in her tower chamber with its canopied goosedown bed, tree-of-Eden tapestries, her window paned with real glass and by the window her chair carved all over with griffins, and her linens and embroidery flosses and—and her little shelf of books; that was the only memory that gave Ettarde a pang of longing. Her library bound in tooled and gilded kidskin: Marcus Aurelius, Plutarch, Ovid, Virgil, Homer, Pliny, Herodotus, Plato, and more. Starving in her chamber, she had taken comfort in reading the philosophers—at first. Later she had not been able to read for thinking of food.

By the tenth day, her clothes had started to hang loose on her and hunger had driven her almost out of her mind. That day, after her serving women had dressed her, she had stripped off her satin-and-velvet gown in a fury. She had flung her necklace of gold and garnets against the wall. She had seized the rosewood casket in which she kept her jewelry—gold and silver, amber, emeralds, chalcedony—and dumped it all on the floor, stamping on the jewels because she could not eat them.

Dressed only in her chemise. As her mother was now.

“He will not give her a blanket,” Etty said. “The night is cold.” With a harsh, hurtful desire she wanted to take warmth, food, love to her mother. Even though she herself sat on stone, amid shadows of nightfall, under stark trees, she wished this. But she knew that her father's men lay in wait to seize her.

With little hope of any help, only talking her way through her own misery, Etty said, “He will give her bread and water, perhaps. To keep her alive until he captures me.”

“You know him,” Lionel said. “How long will he starve her? He will give it up eventually, won't he?”

With no more tone than stones dropping, Rook said, “We should leave.”

“Till he sees it's no use,” Lionel added more gently.

Etty clenched her fists, eyes blurring till she could barely see Lionel's big full-moon face. “And if it were
your
mother?” she cried at him.

Silence. Somewhere amid the oaks and crags, a fox whimpered. As if the forest itself had sighed, a breath of air stirred, smelling of wet loam and mushrooms. Through bare branches, stars winked like imp eyes. Etty shivered, wrapping her old brown mantle more tightly around herself. Feeling her nose running, she reached for the kerchief tucked in her sleeve. Her hand felt scratchy against her arm, callused from bow and arrow, roughened from gathering firewood, digging roots, shelling walnuts. She had not been able to spare her hands, but at least she still used a kerchief. Just because she was an outlaw didn't mean she had to wipe her nose on her sleeve, like Rowan, or let her hair grow all knotted and clotted like Rook's. She had managed to keep the golden-brown sheen in her hair, her face clean and its skin petal-soft and smooth, the way her mother had taught her.

“If it were my mother,” came Lionel's soft reply, “I'd feel as you do, of course. But . . .”

But feeling was no use, he meant, though he was too gentle to say it. Or feeling for the caged lady was all very well, but there was no way to save her.

Rowan sighed like the forest, then said, “Etty, I'll go tomorrow and speak with Robin. Maybe . . . I don't know. Maybe he'll be able to think of some way to help. Just please, promise you won't do anything tonight.”

Etty kept her promise—more or less. It was dawn before she slipped away.

E
tty had not been able to eat or sleep. She had spent the night with her eyes burning and blinking, with her empty belly aching like her overfull heart. Even wrapped in her mantle plus two blankets, she had shivered with cold. Partly it was an inner cold that blankets could not warm, yet she lay all too aware of how frost stiffened her hair, furred her blankets. Had Father allowed Mother a blanket against the frost?

In her heart, Etty knew better.

By the time the morning star rose, chilly and brilliant like her father's mind, she could not bear to lie there any longer. Rising at first light, her breath hanging white in the air, Etty pulled on stagskin boots, then slipped out of the rowan hollow and away toward Fountain Dale.