Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (11 page)

Yes, war was fit to despise. Etty nodded.

“But despise you, no. I like not to despise people.”

Beau had an accent of her own, Etty noticed, when she was not being Frankish. Maybe the fake Frankish accent had been to cover up her real one in the king's court. Or maybe . . . maybe it was Beau's way of covering up other aspects of herself. Feelings, perhaps?

Beau's brilliant grin softened to a smile. “Wanderers despise folk who stay in one place like toadstools—but I have left my people. I try to despise no one.”

Somebody at Fountain Dale blew a few sleepy notes on a horn, signaling sleepers to awaken. It was time to disappear. Etty turned and slipped into the forest. The sun had not yet cleared away the mist there; it still swirled in white tendrils around Etty's bare ankles. The others followed her as she picked her way up a steep rise amid ferns and bracken, under forest shade draped with grape and ivy, bound toward Robin Hood's oak.

She needed to have one more talk—she hoped it would be just a talk—with her father.

S
he wanted to speak with her mother privately first, but there was no chance. Her father spotted her the moment she stepped into the clearing. There under the giant oak he sat, clothed in the borrowed jerkin and leggings of a common yeoman but as imperious as ever, despite being flanked by outlaw guards.

“Daughter!” he roared across the shady hollow at Ettarde. “Have you yet seen your clear duty? Might we depart from this accursed wilderness?”

Her father's shouting still made her tremble. But she kept that reaction to herself, forcing herself to reply in tones that were quick, loud and cheery, like the song of a mistle thrush. “You may go when you like, Father. Where's Mother?”

“Here!” came a silvery call, and her mother hurried toward her from the other side of the oak, still barefoot and in her chemise, but with an outlaw's cloak wrapped around her for warmth. Etty hugged her and felt her mother's embrace like a blessing. Many times in the past day she and her mother had embraced, but still not enough.

Father bellowed, “What mean you, daughter? Approach me!”

Ettarde gave him a blank stare and sat down where she was, near the cooking fire. Mother sat also, across from Ettarde, at the farthest possible point from King Solon. At the edges of her attention, Ettarde was aware of Beau and Robin standing by, listening, and other outlaws going about their business in silence unusual for them.

Ettarde helped herself to one of the scones that lay near the fire to warm. She took a big bite of the warm bread and chewed it well before she told the king, “What I mean, Father, is that you may go where you will when you will, and I will stay here.”

“What!” His glare seemed to pierce Etty like a sword, as always, and he seemed huge to her, his wrath swelling him like a toad. But she kept herself from shrinking back as he ranted at her. “What impudence is this? Thoughtless wench, do you care nothing for the brave men who will perish unless you—”

“But the folk of Auberon are your subjects, Father, not mine.” Etty made sure to speak clearly and calmly. “And the fault will be yours, not mine, if they die.”

It was as if she had thrown cool water into hot oil. Her father sputtered, his temper in such a boil that he could barely speak. He could only flare, “Impudent hussy—”

“It is up to you, Father. And peace is within your power. No lives need be lost.” She spoke slowly, each word a chessman to be moved so that maybe her father would notice, would hear her—or so Ettarde hoped, although in her heart she knew better. “All you need to do is leave the gates of Auberon open for Lord Basil. Let him in. Give the holding over to him.”

In the instant of silence that followed, Etty tried to sit solid like a rock and not cringe. Keeping her eyes on her father as he gawked, still she felt Robin's stare, her mother's wondering glance. She heard a cuckoo singing and knew that most folk would think her crazy. She felt Beau's eyes upon her and wondered if the stranger girl knew it was from her, Beauregard du Fleur Noir, that Ettarde had learned this back door: War was not a necessity, but a choice men made. King Solon the Red could save his own people if he really wanted to.

She braced herself for his response.

He seemed to struggle for breath at first. Then he burst into abuse. “Fool! Simpleton! Lackwit girl! Can such a goose girl be a daughter of mine? Senseless—”

Etty remarked, “ ‘When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff.' Cicero.”

“Argument?” roared King Solon. “Argument? There can be no argument! The kingdom of Auberon is my right, my inheritance, my destiny! I—”

“ ‘Are you not ashamed of heaping up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation,' ” quoted Ettarde, “ ‘and caring so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?' Socrates.” Growing aware of sparrows chuckling in the spreading oak overhead, of smiles spreading among the listeners, Etty kept her face under control and her eyes steadily upon her father.

“I was a fool,” he said grimly, “a wrongheaded fool to forget the right order of things, to let you learn from books.”

“Not so, Father. I thank you for teaching me.” Ettarde leaned toward him, for she really wanted him to understand. “You are a very good scholar.” She paused, bracing herself to say what was next in her thoughts. “But Father, you are not a good king.”

“And not a good husband,” said a quiet, sweet voice Etty had not expected. Her mother.

King Solon felt that voice, Etty saw. It struck him speechless. But he lifted his chin, his pointed beard, like a weapon.

Etty said earnestly, “Father, your kingdom is an accident of your birth, that is all. Think! Has it not always been a burden to you, making you harsh and bitter?” For a rueful moment Etty wondered what her father would have been like had fate not made him a king. Whether he would have treated her with more of a father's love. But it was no use thinking of what might have been. “Has not your truest heart been always with your books? Why not cast off the cares of Auberon, join a monastery—”

“Bah! You're insane,” he said hoarsely. As if her words frightened him, with much haste but small dignity he scrambled to his feet.

From off to one side an utterly unexpected voice said, “‘There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.' Seneca.” It was Beau who spoke.

“
Mon foi!
” Ettarde exclaimed, grinning at her.

“Impudence beyond impudence,” stormed King Solon as he thrust a shaking finger at Ettarde. “You—vixen, wretched shrew—you no longer deserve to be called my daughter.”

She turned back to him, sober again. “I am sorry you feel that way, Father.”

This was true. With a pang in her heart she wished it were otherwise between them.

Likely she would never know.

King Solon ranted, “Bah! A pox on you and all your cohorts. Stay here and bear my curse.”

“If the innocent folk of Auberon bleed and die, Father,” Etty told him quietly, “it will not be by my doing.”

“Idiocy!” He turned to storm away, but the guards seized him by the arms. “Unhand me!” he shouted, struggling against them no more effectively than a bug. The guards looked to Robin, and Robin looked to Etty.

“Let him go back to Fountain Dale,” she said.

Robin told the guards, “Guide him there.”

Take him by a long and roundabout path, he meant. They started to blindfold the king first, so that he would not learn the way to Robin's hideout. But King Solon ducked the strip of cloth, looked over his shoulder and snapped at his wife, “Come, woman!”

Queen Elsinor remained seated by the fire, shaking her head serenely. “I will visit with my daughter yet awhile, good my lord.”

“I bade you come!”

She did not move, but said as pleasantly as if she spoke of the weather, “What, after you put me in a cage? I cherish and obey you no longer, my lord. Go your ways.”

The guards blindfolded him and tugged him toward the forest. “My curse on all of you!” he screamed as they half carried him away.

 

Several days later, footsore and much farther north, Etty stood at the edge of a forest called Barnesdale Wood, gazing over common land where the prickles of last year's furze were being burned to make way for new green shoots. Peering beyond smoke and small flame, Ettarde could see soft hills, a lazy loop of river, freshly plowed strips of field, and then the village and the fortress of Celydon.

“I never thought to come home to my brother as such a beggar,” murmured her mother from atop the white pony, Dove.

Etty placed her hand on Dove's swanlike neck and looked up at her mother with a smile. Mother, who had no shoes, rode the elegant pony. The rest of them had walked: Beau, Lionel, Rowan, Rook, Ettarde herself, and a few of Robin Hood's men for an added measure of safety. They had been walking since the hour Ettarde had sent King Solon on his way. Etty had decided then, with her mother's agreement and Robin Hood's blessing, that it was better for her and her mother to be elsewhere in case King Solon managed to rally his men-at-arms and attempt to reclaim his wife and daughter.

Etty had run to the rowan hollow first, to say goodbye to Rowan and Lionel and Rook, but the band had refused to be left behind. Now here they all stood at the outskirts of Celydon Manor.

And Ettarde had to make yet another hard decision.

Between what she wanted and what she knew she had to do.

But there was no choice, really. Ettarde looked down at her own hands, her knuckles rough and her nails ragged from shelling hazelnuts and shooting arrows and digging wild parsnips and gathering firewood and playing at quarterstaffs with Rowan. Uncle Marcus would not approve of her hands any more than Mother did. Slowly, careful not to sigh, Etty slipped the thin silver ring off her finger.

“Not for my sake, please, dear,” said her mother's soft voice, like an angel's, from above.

Etty shook her head. “No.” Although in truth she was thinking partly of her mother, whose life had taken some hard turns of late. Etty considered that Mother deserved to have her daughter by her side when she entered Celydon castle to ask her brother, the lord, for aid and shelter. But Etty's greater concern was for Rowan and Lionel and Rook and, yes, Beau. And Robin Hood. Ettarde knew quite well that, until she learned her father's intentions, she must consider herself a danger to the others in her band and all the outlaws in the forest. Let Uncle Marcus bear the task of protecting her and dealing with Solon the Red.

Etty knew what she had to do. Still, she could not quite help blinking back tears as she turned to Rowan and held out her strand of the silver ring.

There was a murmur of dismay from the others. Rowan took a step back, exclaiming, “No, Etty, keep it.”

“But I want you to have it. Or give it to Beau.” Etty turned to the proud, dark-eyed girl, who wore brown leggings and a brown mantle with her crimson tunic now. “Let her take my place.”

Rowan said, “No one can take your place. We'll welcome Beau for her own sake . . . ” Rowan shot a questioning glance at Lionel. With only a single, appealing glance heavenward, he nodded. Rowan nodded back. “We'll welcome Beau for her own sake if she wants to stay.” And Rowan, also, turned gravely to Beau.

Overhead, the little brown tree-creeper birds twittered and drummed, but for once Beau seemed at a loss for words. Her mouth softened like a shy child's, her eloquent eyes widened, and in their gaze Ettarde sensed a muddle of surprised emotion: joy, fear, doubt, longing. In that moment, Ettarde felt that Beau could have been her sister. She blurted, “Beau, your parents, your people—why did you run away?”

The girl fixed her with her midnight gaze. “Because they beat me,” she said. “Always beat, beat, beat. To make me be silent and maidenly.”

Lionel chuckled. “You? Silent?”

Her sudden grin flashed. “You see! It is useless,
non
?”

“No. I mean, yes.”

Rowan pulled from her finger the three remaining strands of the puzzle ring that had been her mother's, and separated one. “For Beau,” she said, offering it. “We are an outlaw band, Beau, and you will be a strand of the band. Without being silent and maidenly.”

The outcast girl took it, saying nothing. Perhaps she could not speak. Etty noticed that her dark eyes swam liquid, like wells.

“Etty, keep yours,” Rowan said. “You will always be one of us.”

“I will try—” Etty heard her voice wavering, steadied it and started over. “I will try to come back to you.”