Lion Heart (11 page)

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.”

“Yes,” she said, unapologetically. “It complicates
things.”

“Only if I leave,” I told her.

She gripped my hand. “This path—I cannot keep you safe, Marian.”

“I've never been safe,” I told her. “No sense in starting now.”

The next morning, I went walking about the grounds, at an utter loss with what to do with myself. I wanted to leave and ride hard for Nottingham, but I were injured and weak, and I didn't want to leave until Eleanor were safe. So I meant to sleep and ended up walking, and I saw Margaret's bright gown in the graveyard amidst all the gray stone and quiet.

I came up to her. She were sitting in front of a grave with a crumbling stone of a marker. “Friend of yours?” I asked.

She glanced up at me. She weren't quite as young as I thought; maybe around my own age, just—sweeter. Newer, in some way. “Do you know who is buried here?” she asked.

It were fair clear I didn't, since I just asked, so I sat beside her and waited for her to tell me.

“King Arthur and Guinevere,” she told me.

I frowned at the grave marker. “Shouldn't it be more grand?”

She nodded. “Yes. It should. But they've been dead
a very long time.”

“I wouldn't have been buried with her,” I told her. “Guinevere was disloyal. With his best friend—the worst sort of disloyal. She buried him as sure as a knife, and took the whole of his kingdom down with her.”

She smiled. “Wouldn't we be Guinevere in that story?”

I started to tell her I'd never be disloyal, but I wondered if that's what it meant to marry another man, to run to another country, when my heart were firm in Rob's chest. “No,” I told her.

She shook her head. “It's wonderful,” she said. “Arthur—he loved her. He loved everything about her. And even when she hurt him and was cruel to him, he still loved her. It seems a precious thing, for someone to know the very worst part of you and love you anyway.”

I frowned.

“You don't think?” she asked.

“It's hard to argue when you say it so prettily,” I told her.

She smiled.

“And it seems strange that you'd have a care for the worst in people. You don't seem to have much in the way of darkness,” I told her.

Her smile went watery. “That's good, I suppose—you don't want everyone to see your darkness, do you?”

I frowned deeper.

“That man—yesterday—” she said, halting. “He would have taken me. Moments more, he would have done it. And I wonder if my—someone would still have me if that happened.”

I looked at her. Were she betrothed? “Marriage is just about money,” I told her. “If you still had that, you'd be well enough. Unless you have a particular man.”

She bit her lip, glancing back at the abbey like someone might hear. “Saer loves me. And I love him.”

“Oh.”
Rob.
“Well, loving someone makes you forgive just about everything,” I told her. My chest felt tight and out of breath. “Besides, willing and unwilling are two very different forms of being disloyal.”

She shivered. “I'd never been so frightened in my life,” she whispered. “And my first worry was that somehow this whole thing made me less in his eyes.” She shook her head.

“Will you tell him?” I asked.

She nodded quick. “I can't imagine keeping it from him.”

My thoughts ran back to the last night I saw Gisbourne alive, and how he'd tried to hurt me the same as that man tried to hurt Margaret, and how I knew then I could never tell Rob. I wondered if that meant I loved Rob less than she loved this Saer.

“I can't imagine keeping anything from him. You
know.”

“I don't think I do.” I sighed, still remembering Rob that night, how he'd touched me and my fear had rushed away and I still hadn't told him.

“Well, you know Saer so well,” she said, glancing around again.

“I do?”

She nodded, and her words tumbled out in a rush like a secret she'd been waiting to tell me. “He speaks so highly of you. He even gave me a knife when he heard I'd travel with the queen, in case of something just like this, even though I don't know how to use it. I don't even carry it with me. But he did that because he said you used one so well.”

“And I know him? He hasn't just heard something about me?”

She laughed. “My lady, do you not know my lord Winchester's Christian name?”

“
Winchester
?” I repeated. “Saer—Winchester is your Saer?”

She flushed, but smiled and nodded.

“Oh. Yes, of course, you know I know him.”

“But that wasn't the first time you met him, was it? He said you're beloved of his dear friend.”

Rob.

“Robin Hood,” she told me, with a grand smile, like she knew my secret. “Or Locksley, as he insists on calling him. So
much less romantic!”

I stood, hampered a bit by the dress. “I don't want to talk of . . . him,” I said. I wished it didn't sound like a plea on my lips.

“I'm sorry!” she cried. “I didn't mean—I just—I never get to speak about him. My father hasn't agreed to the match, and we're not supposed to be seen together. I can't tell anyone, and I thought—” She stopped, and I knew I'd silenced her.

“I would like to hear of Winchester,” I told her. “He's been an incredibly kind friend to me, and I have nothing but loyalty for him. But the other—Robin Hood—I don't want to speak of him.” It were easier to say Robin Hood. That didn't bring to mind Rob's face, his eyes, his hands on my skin.

She lifted a shoulder. “I have enough to say about Saer to fill several days.”

My brows pushed together at this comment, but she didn't notice. She simply took my hand and started to walk, chattering on about every detail of their lovely, traditional, perfect courtship. There were kisses and gifts and secret walks that were the closest they got to scandal.

There weren't no death, no torture and nightmares and bruises and cuts. There weren't nights when they were so close together and kept apart by a husband that would have sooner seen me dead than loved me.

“You were married, weren't you?” she asked me, tugging on my arm. She knew I weren't paying enough mind to her.

It weren't really a good question to ask if she wanted me to talk more. “Yes,” I said.

“When were you engaged?”

I frowned. “A lifetime ago.” Then my frowning got worse. “You said I was married, not that I am.”

Red rose in her cheeks. “Yes. I know—I know your husband died.”

I remembered it clear, the sight of Gisbourne's big body twisting slow in the wind. I'd felt free. And a darker emotion, when I'd realized why he died—just so the prince could use me to hurt Robin, use me to take the position of sheriff away from Rob.

Gisbourne had hurt me from the first, when I were a defiant little girl and he'd cut the scar in my cheek and marked me forever. He'd hunted me down as a thief, and he hurt me as my husband. And yet before he died, he'd told me,
your unassailable loyalty and unshakable belief should have been for me
. Like I should have cared for him, when all he ever wanted were to hurt me. But caring for him weren't something he could take from me against my will.

“Saer—Winchester—he told me about him. About Lord Leaford.”

“Told you,” I repeated, my blood running cold. “What did he tell you?”

She glanced around, nervous. “I don't know. He just
told me. About Nottingham, and seeing the two of you there. And—” She started and stopped.

“And?” I demanded, stepping forward.

She stepped back, scared and open now. She were blinking fast but her eyes had tears in them. “He told me Leaford was cruel to you,” she whispered.

Cruel.
I remembered that night, that awful night, when Gisbourne tried to force me, the cold promise of his hands pulling at my skirt and the fear. The fear worst of all, that he could steal it out of me when no one else could.

Her arm touched mine and I jerked away. “He had no right to tell you of anything I suffered at Gisbourne's hands.”

“It was deplorable!” Margaret continued on. “Why shouldn't he speak of a man without honor? Why shouldn't he decry that? And Winchester—he didn't even know you were a princess. Did your husband?”

“What does it matter?” I yelled at her, high and empty in the quiet of the graveyard. “A princess? Does that make it worse, because when a man took a blacksmith's daughter he had a royal ring on his hand? You don't know these things and I'm glad that you don't, but all men are like that, Margaret. All of them. They are rotten and dying inside and some cover it up better than others.” My mind filled with thoughts of the fishwives that were crying in cold houses now, their husbands' blood still on my hands. “Maybe we all are. Maybe we are all rotten and dark inside.”