Mark of the Black Arrow (26 page)

This time there was blood, so much of it that it sprayed Robin from brow to belt, painting him red like a demon. Becca turned her head from the sight just as giant hands circled round her.

*  *  *

The women and children on the platform stood with their heads bowed in their nooses. They didn’t cry or wail, not the children, not the mothers of the children.

They’ve been drugged.

It was the only thing that made sense. Childless, Marian still had that maternal instinct nestled in her heart like a seed waiting for its season to bloom. It was there, the knowledge of the love one had for one’s own child. She knew if it had been her on that gallows, and her children beside her, she would have screamed for mercy until her dying breath.

Her uncle sat beside her, leaning back in his chair and smiling—
grinning
. Will Scarlet sat on the other side of him and wore a sour face. She couldn’t believe this was going to happen. She was going to watch people die. Innocent people.

She wanted to run to them.

She wanted to cut them free.

She stood, and the dagger in her skirts hung heavy against her thigh. It took all her willpower to keep from touching it through the slit cut in the seam that would allow her to draw it free.

“This can’t happen.”

Her uncle turned. “Oh, it will happen,” he said. “These traitors will dance in the air for us.”

“There are children.”

“Do you know how old Cain was when he slew his brother Abel?”

The question drew her short. “What?”

Prince John waved his hand at her. “You are familiar with the story from your Bible, are you not?” She nodded. He leaned close, bringing his face near hers. “So then, how old was Cain when he first drew blood?”

Is this a trick?

Will leaned forward in his chair, looking intently at the gallows. Sweat ran down his face.

“Where did
he
come from?”

She threw a glance at where he looked. The Sheriff stood on the platform by the women and children there. They all looked at him, eyes wide and docile. His black armored hand rested on the lever that jutted from the stage, the lever that would release the trapdoor beneath the nooses.

The world slid sideways. It was all happening so fast.

“Niece of mine, answer the question.”

The prince was so close to her, she could feel his breath on her cheek. Her face turned toward him but her eyes remained on the gallows, on the black-armored Sheriff with his hand on the lever.

“It doesn’t say.”

“Precisely!” Prince John cried.

The Sheriff jerked the lever.

The trap fell with a clap of wood and all seven of the people on the stage, two mothers and five children, dropped as if they’d stepped off a ledge. The ropes yanked, jerking them short. The wet crunch of separated vertebrae rolled across her, loud in her ears. The mothers and children bounced and dangled, swaying with their heads cocked to the side and their jaws crushed closed in the grimace of strangulation.

Will Scarlet turned away, fist to his mouth, struggling to hold back vomit.

Marian was numb, scrubbed raw by the short sudden violence of the hanging.

Prince John touched her face with his fingertips. She dragged her eyes from the swaying bodies to peer straight at him. His bottom lip hung out in a pout, and his eyebrows drew low over his eyes.

“The point of the question, young Marian, is that he could have been a child.”

*  *  *

The dirt was packed tight, stomped down by all three of them. Robin knelt beside the unmarked grave. He’d sweated away the blood on his face and arms, but his shirt had turned black with it. Flies buzzed around him. He didn’t brush them away.

“You gotta get up.”

Robin didn’t look at the man who loomed over him like a mighty oak. “Leave me be for a moment.”

“I’ve done that, Lord Longstride,” the fellow replied. “Time for you to be up and moving.”

“That’s my father.”

The giant of a man pushed forward. “It’s you, too. Now get up or I’ll haul you to your feet.”

“Dammit, Little John, leave me be.”

John Little, known as Little John from the moment he became the biggest man in the realm, began to reach down for Robin. Then a spotted hand, still strong as steel, closed on his arm. Little John looked over. Old Soldier shook his head and removed his hand from the bigger man’s arm.

He had a sword in his hand.

Little John stepped back, and Old Soldier knelt in front of Robin.

“First time?”

Robin’s voice was dull, flat, when he spoke. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve been mad, but never before felt such… such
anger
.”

“You’ve never before had two men try to kidnap your sister.”

Robin looked up sharply. “Are you making fun of me?”

Old Soldier frowned. “No, son, I’m not. I’m explaining why you lost control, so you don’t feel bad.”

“I didn’t lose control. I knew
exactly
what I was doing when I did it.”

Little John drew in a sharp breath. “Jesus, Mary, an’ all the saints.”

Old Soldier cut him off with a sharp chop of his hand.

His eyes stayed on Robin. “Doesn’t change the reason you did what you did.”

“The world is falling apart. Why were the king’s men trying to steal my sister?”

“I think this may have something to do with it.” Old Soldier held the sword out, pommel first. He’d stripped the bodies of their mail and their weapons before burial. “This is new.”

Robin looked. The pommel weight had been ground flat and inscribed with a symbol. Lines and whorls intersected, crossing each other in geometric eddies that his eye wanted to trace, but couldn’t.

He shook his head. “The man personalized his sword. I’ve done the same to my bow.”

“It’s on both swords. Those men didn’t look to be brothers, so not a family symbol.”

“What is it?”

Old Soldier shrugged, his ever-present mail shirt shushed under the linen tunic he wore over it, steel links rubbing softly on the fibers. “It feels like there’s something to it, some power. I’m old, but this is not a symbol used by any part of the Lionheart service.” He ran a calloused finger over the symbol. Traces of color followed the lines where he touched it. “It’s not natural. I’d guess magic.”

“Magic isn’t real.”

Old Soldier raised his eyebrow. “Want to ask your mother about that?”

Robin said nothing for a long moment. “If those swords have magic symbols that make you steal children…” He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”

“Believe that you saw two of the king’s men trying to take your sister. You know King Richard—strength of character is one of his staunchest requirements of service. The soldiers he left behind wouldn’t try to steal a child. Not without a revolt in the ranks.”

Robin looked at the symbol again. “Magic.” He shook his head.

“Could be.”

“We tell no one about this. If anyone comes by to ask, we never saw soldiers.” Robin pulled himself to his feet. “And we do
NOT
show my mother that symbol.”

Little John spoke up. “What if they try for your sister again?”

“We’ve got a lot of land, and a lot of places to dig holes.” Robin looked in the direction of the house. “I’m going to check on Ruth. Work’s done for the day.”

“Good enough,” Old Soldier said.

Robin turned away from the two men. They watched him go.

“If he hadn’t cut through the woods, we could have stopped him from killing those soldiers.”

“If I weren’t old as this dirt and you big as this field, then we could have arrived to do more than watch.”

Little John rubbed his face. “The viciousness of what he did…”

“I’ve seen worse.”

“Have you done worse?”

Old Soldier considered his words before answering.

“Not with a shovel.”

T
he woman kept crying. It shook her entire body as she huddled around herself, hands digging into her arms and shoulders. She rocked, the chair beneath her creaking with each movement. Her wailing filled the small home, swirling around the air like a wasp digging its way into the ear, burrowing its way deeper.

“Stell, pull yourself together!” her husband barked.

If Stell pulls herself together any more
, Alan-a-Dale mused,
she will fold like a sheet.
He didn’t smile at the thought, holding his face blank. Instead, he touched the man on his shoulder, long slender fingers barely brushing cloth.

“Let us step outside and give her a moment.”

The man nodded and Alan motioned him toward the door. Together they picked their way over the objects littering the floor. Broken dishes, keepsakes, books, all pulled from the shelves by uncaring hands. The only chair on four legs was the one on which Stell still huddled. She stopped rocking and watched them leave the house, her eyes red and raw.

Alan ducked under the lintel and stepped out into the small garden. He had passed by this home just a week ago, and the front had been a riot of color so beautiful that he’d had to stop and compose a short verse. Now it was a churn of mud and crushed petals. He kept the verse in his heart. It would be cruel, not comforting, to share it with Stell and her husband now.

He looked at the stout man who turned in a small, slow circle. A tear tracked down his face as he studied the wreckage.

“Mayhap it will help to tell me what happened,” Alan suggested.

“The bastards took my property! In the name of that false king that Richard left behind!” The man’s voice was raspy, but loud. It carried out past the small wooden fence that surrounded his home.

Alan looked around sharply.

“Advice, friend,” he said. “Keep your voice down with words like that.”

The man glared at him. “Are you going to report what I said? If so, then good! Tell that imposter on the throne and his lapdog Locksley,” he roared out at the sky and shook his fist. “Terrify my wife, take my things… I’ll
kill
someone.”

Alan stepped back from the man, who whirled at the movement.

“They’ve already come to my shop and demanded that I make armor and swords for fifty men, all as a tax! I’m expected to shoulder the cost of the ore, pay the assistant, and do the work. Richard already took almost everything I had on his fool chase across the ocean, but at least he paid for his. This black-hearted brother… that arsehole… just threatens.” He spat on the ground

“And I did it. I made his damned armor and swords and I made them good, put their custom marks on each, even though they demanded them in a time that meant I had to sleep by the forge. But
that
was my tax.
That
was my due. Then they come here, take my personal property, destroy more than they took. It’s not right!”

“What did they take?” Alan asked.

“They took my dignity.”

“What
property
did they confiscate?”

The smith looked up at nothing, thinking. He began listing things and counting on thick, calloused fingers.

“The gold left from Richard’s payment, one third the food in my larder, a pair of new boots I was saving for the Christ mass, all the books my wife had, and an arm ring my dad took off a raiding Northman he killed.” He closed his counting fingers and shook the fist they made. “And what they didn’t take, they broke.”

Alan-a-Dale nodded, letting the man vent his anger.

“I suffered through an apprenticeship under Smythe to learn this trade. Ten long,
hard
years of doing whatever that bastard wanted, all for scraps of bread, a bowl of water, and the ability to learn my craft. Ten years! I’m a craftsman. A
free
man. This is unholy, what’s happened to me… and not just me, but all the shopkeeps in the marketplace. This so-called king is a greedy pigsuckler!”

Alan stood in the late afternoon sun beside the blacksmith in his destroyed yard and his upturned home. His heart lay heavy in his chest for the man and his wife, but it sank like a stone in the sea when the man looked up at him with tears cutting tracks through the grime on his cheeks.

“How will we survive this winter?”

*  *  *

The air in the hallway was stifling. The stones beside him radiated heat. It was midday and this was an outside wall. Sweat rolled under his brown woolen robe, skimming along his body until it soaked into the coarse fibers.

We should put in some windows for ventilation.
He knew that it would never be done, however. The hall was too low for them to remove stones to allow the air to pass—that would compromise the integrity of the wall itself. Take out even one, and the outside wall became exponentially more likely to crumble under an attack.

An attack.
The thought took him back. He still remembered being a child, early in his coming to the service of the Lord. He’d been at a monastery in the highlands held siege by the Sea Wolves, a motley, savage band of raiders and reavers come from the icy north to steal gold and rape women. The only things that saved his life—the lives of all the brothers there, and the lives of the villagers who hid with them—were the walls. Like these they were stout and thick, made of stones pressed tightly together.

The Sea Wolves had howled outside for ten days, drinking their wine and screaming for the monastery to send out the women and the gold. Do that, they said, and they would leave.

With sunrise on the eleventh day they had disappeared. Out of wine, out of food, and out of the berserker madness, they’d silently climbed back in their longboats and sailed away, possibly in shame but probably to hunt for easier prey down the coast.

A noise pulled him from the memory. Voices, and something else. He quickened his steps until he reached a hall that opened into an anteroom. A handful of brothers crowded around a door. The ones not under a vow of silence spoke in a murmur. Each man’s face held a similar expression of horror.

They were gathered at the entrance to the monastery’s library. The hubbub masked the sound of his approach. He stopped an arm’s length away from them.

“What is going on?” he demanded. “Why are you all meandering about?”