Lion Heart (16 page)

“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.

“Oxford is his vassal,” I told her. “He has a right to be back here.”

“You will stay, then?” someone else asked.

My breath hitched. “I can't. I don't have the right to be here.”

“But what will happen to us? What's to prevent him from starting back up tomorrow?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “Oxford—he'll be better.”

Roger nodded to me. “We'll be better, m'lady. I won't let him hurt anyone anymore. Even if I have to wear a hood and learn the bow to do it.”

There were shouts and grunts, all agreeing with the boy.

They'd be killed if they fought back. He were a boy—a young boy, not trained in hardship the way Rob and Much and John and I had been. He still had a heart, and he'd lose it.

But if they did nothing, they'd be whipped, and taxed, and broken.

I shook my head, stepping back from them. “I can't,” I told them. “I can't tell you what to do. What choices to make.”

Roger's mother put her hands on his shoulders. “You've shown us all we needed to know, my lady. Thank you.”

CHAPTER

The next morning I went to Allan's room and opened the door, finding David already in there, rumpled and mussed, sitting in a chair and staring at Allan. He started to stand when he saw me, and I shook my head.

David eased back with a sigh.

“How is he?”

David's shoulder lifted. “Well enough, I think.” He leaned forward and slapped Allan's exposed cheek. “Wake up, you lousy drunk,” he growled.

Allan jerked and looked at David with a sleepy smile, then turned and saw me. “Just the lady I wanted to see.”

I snorted. “I'm certain.” I came forward and sat at the end of his bed, careful not to jostle my back. “I'm hoping it's to tell me that you didn't get stone drunk with no reason and there's some plot in all this.”

He sat up full with a groan. “Christ Almighty, Lord, I don't deserve such a pain in my head.” He touched his face and then his eye, wincing. “And I think I've been beset by ruffians.”

“That was me,” David grunted. Allan looked wounded. “You had the audacity to make light of how
he
injured her,” David seethed.

Allan's face dropped. “My lady, I didn't—”

I waved my hand. “I'm hardly concerned with drunken prattle, Allan. But I still believe there's a method to your particular idiocy, so tell me now if I'm wrong.”

He rubbed the uninjured half of his face. “There's a reason for sure, my lady. I've learned well that men are never so unguarded as when they think there's a drunkard around. I caught a string of gossip, and I followed that thread as far as I could.”

David seemed even more angry by this. “So you-you-you
drink
to find information?” he sputtered. “That makes no damn sense—you don't even remember me punching you. How can you remember anything else?”

Allan's eyebrow lifted. “It's a hard line to walk, to be sure, but someone has to do it.” He leaned toward David, his eyes narrowing. “And you'd be damn surprised what I remember, sir.”

David shook his head, standing and going to the wall, farther from Allan.

“Information, Allan,” I reminded. “If you two wouldn't mind keeping your antics till later?”

Allan sighed. “I can't confirm it—I was in the middle of doing just that, but I was quite rudely interrupted. But if it's true, it's bad. It's exceptionally bad.”

I waited.

“One of the lords loyal to the prince—he was with him at Nottingham, my lady, and if I remember he wasn't particularly fond of you.”

“Who?” I asked.

“De Clare, the heir to the Earldom of Hertford. He and the prince have been thick as thieves since Gisbourne's death, and he started mouthing off when a barmaid wouldn't have him. He said that within the year, he'd be the right hand of the king—of the new king.”

I frowned. “That's hardly news, Allan.”

Allan looked at me. “I know. Someone praised you—the daughter of the king—at that, and he laughed. He said Richard wouldn't come home and you would be shown your place. Someone challenged this, and he said there are ways to kill a person without ever laying a finger on them. He said all you have to do is murder their heart.”

I sat back, my chest tight.

“What the hell does that mean?” David said. “That doesn't even make sense.”

“We have to go,” I whispered.

David looked to me.

My shoulders twisted up. “He doesn't mean me. He means Nottingham. He means Rob,” I said, and my voice broke to say his name.

“I feared the same, my lady,” Allan said low.

“We're still days away,” I said. “We have to leave now.”

David stood. “Yes, my lady.”

I gathered my things as fast as I could, making half excuses to D'Oyly and Essex. We rode all night, and I weren't sure I were breathing the whole way there, or blinking, or had blood rushing through my veins. I were terrified of what would be at the end of this road, and strangely I were eager to meet it as fast as I could.

We stopped only for the sake of the horses, and when we dismounted to let them rest and drink, I were shaking. David and Allan were watching me close as we ate and drank and let the horses do the same, but they didn't question me. There weren't nothing to say if they did.

I opened my saddlebag, my fingers shaking as I pulled out the now creased and crumpled letters that I hadn't the will to open.
SCARLET, 132
.

My heart strummed loud through my veins as I touched it, the thought of opening it—of being with him in some small measure—thrilling through my blood.

I pushed it back inside. Not yet. I couldn't do it yet. Especially not if there were some chance he weren't alive in Nottingham to be found.

We smelled it long before we arrived. It were like the time we near lost Major Oak; even if the burning were through, it
hung in the air, resting like ghostly fingers around the trees, the brush, anything it could hold on to.

Smoke.

The cloud of it were hanging in the air like a canopy, and it made my eyes sting and water. We rode forward, slowing as we neared the gates of Nottingham. David called my name and mimicked using his cloak to cover his mouth. I copied him.

The city gate were open, unguarded.

My heart hammered in my throat as we went slow into the bounds of the city. Nearest to the road, the houses and shacks that crowded to be counted in the walls were heaps of charred black.

Burned.

Prince John brought fire to my city.

There were a body in the ditch off the edge of the road. It were a woman, her dress and skin burned, her twisted, blackened hand covering her face.

I turned my face from her, looking up at the castle though I could bare see it in the smoke. My eyes stung fierce, and I let tears fall like they could soothe the pain in my eyes, but it didn't help.

Rob couldn't be alive. He wouldn't have let this happen without a fight, and if there had been enough men to burn a city, Rob wouldn't have been able to fight them. Alone. Without me by his side, where I were meant to be.

The fires weren't bare smoking now, almost out. The city must have been razed days before.

I knew I should have stopped, gone through the city and looked for survivors, for people I could help.

I went to the castle. I couldn't help myself. If he were killed, God only knew what Prince John would have done with the body.

The portcullis were raised, the gate open. I heard a noise, something I'd heard before and couldn't place, a strange, slow creaking.

It weren't till I were right beneath the gate that I could see through the smoke, and a low knock drew my eyes up.

The pair of boots hit the stone wall again, and then I heard the creaking of the rope that held them as the body twisted in the wind.

Bodies. At least five that I could see, hung over the outer wall of the castle and left to die, left to watch as the city burned.

Robin. Robin. Robin.
It were all I could think as I dropped from my horse, running into the guardroom at the gate and searching for the staircase up to the parapet. I were shaking so hard I slipped twice when I tried to climb the stairs, like I couldn't make my wayward limbs obey. Like my hands and legs didn't want to bear me up, not if I were going to see his face hanging off the battlements.

I found the first rope and I half leapt off the wall, grabbing as low as I could and heaving up. The rope didn't move and the edge of the wall cut hard into my stomach. Anchoring my feet, I pulled my whole body back, pulling as hard as I could.

Dead weight
. The true, horrible meaning of that struck me, and I felt tears run fast down my cheeks. I jerked hard
on the rope and it fought against me, dragging from my hands and tearing my skin with it. I cried out, looking at the raw, bloody mess.

“Damn you,” I grunted, setting back at the rope. “Damn you, God. This is
your
fault. You were meant to protect them. You were meant to protect
him
,” I accused. The body moved the barest inch, and I planted my feet against the wall itself, heaving back.

Cold touched my neck, and I looked to the side, to see a tall man in a gray cloak pointing a sword at me. “Drop the rope,” he ordered.

“The hell I will,” I snapped back.

“You will not steal from their bodies,” he growled, pushing the sword against my throat. I felt a trickle of wet run down my skin. “How dare you
touch
them.”