MARIAN BOLTED upright when the first scream tore through the quiet night. For a breathless moment, she cast around helplessly, unable to understand what had woken her, or how she’d gotten onto her thin straw pallet on the floor of Johnny’s house, or why she was still wearing her dress. Then another scream pierced the air, and Marian flew over to the window.
Men on dark horses thundered through the village, torches held aloft, blades flashing in the eerie, flickering light. Marian gasped and shrank back, flattening herself against the nearest wall.
The door to the room flew open; Johnny tumbled in, his face white and pinched.
“What?” Marian said. “What is it?”
“Bandits,” Johnny said.
Marian gasped, her hands flying to her mouth. She had taken only three steps toward the door when Johnny caught her by the arm and spun her around.
“Marian, you can’t go out there!”
“Let me go,” she said, furiously shaking him off.
“It isn’t safe out there.”
“But Papa—”
“He’s a knight, Marian. You can’t—” Johnny made another grab for her, and she might have struck him had the door not flown open again. The pair of them whirled around to see Laura, pale and shaking in her nightclothes, slam the door shut behind her. Her gaze landed on Johnny, then on Marian. She blew out a shaky breath and sagged against the door.
“Ma,” Johnny said. He grabbed her and held her up. “Ma, are you all right?”
“You’re both in here,” she said, nodding. She covered her face with her hands and breathed into them.
“What’s happening out there?” Marian asked desperately. She took Laura’s other arm and led her over to the pallet. The three of them sank down onto it, clutching at one another.
“Bandits. Maybe twenty of them. They’ll have followed the king’s company for days now.” Laura’s voice was so quiet that Marian had to lean in to hear her. “Waiting for the right time to strike.” She shook her head and tipped her head back against the wall. “That damnable wine—I served them all that damn wine.” She sobbed openly, just once, and it was that more than anything that shook Marian. Outside the screams grew louder, grew closer together; they were joined by the clanging of swords and by terrifying, guttural moans that sounded like wounded animals being slaughtered.
A shiver raced up Marian’s spine. She looked at Johnny in horror. “We should do something,” she said. “We should help.”
“You can’t help,” Laura said. “You’ll stay right here. Your papa would kill me if something happened to you.”
Marian couldn’t make sense of what was happening. The sounds ricocheting through the house chilled her to her core. She rocked back and forth on the pallet, digging her fingernails into the tender skin of her upper arms. Sweat sprang up on her forehead, slipping down into her eyes and making them sting.
After several long, tense moments, something flew past the window. Orange light flared up with a great whoosh. Laura gasped and shot to her feet. “Go,” she shouted. She hauled Marian to her feet as Johnny scrambled upright.
“Ma—”
“Get out, get out,” she shrieked, shoving Marian at the door. “Run to the church. Don’t stop until you get there.”
Marian didn’t have a chance to disobey her. With a shocking amount of strength, Laura shoved her out of the room and past the blaze that had begun to eat through the main room of the Littles’ house.
Marian screamed. She clawed Laura’s arms, then Johnny’s when he caught her around the waist and pulled her out of the house. “Papa!”
“He’s not in the house!” Johnny shouted. “Marian, run!”
They stumbled forward half a dozen steps, grappling against each other like birds smacking together in midair. Then all at once, Johnny’s arms around Marian went slack. Marian slipped out of his grasp and followed his gaze. Fire had consumed half the house already, and as they stood watching, flames chewed through the rest.
“Ma,” Johnny choked out. He jerked back toward the house, but Marian caught him and held him fast.
“Johnny, no.”
“I don’t see her,” Johnny shouted, but neither of them could see anything. People were running everywhere, yelling and screaming. The fire had spread from Johnny’s house to their barn. Black smoke poured into the sky.
A body slammed into Marian and knocked her to the ground. She yelled when hands seized her arms, hauling her back up.
Johnny.
“Run,” he shouted, shoving her toward the church. “Run!”
They ran together, slipping and stumbling up the hill. Rocks and sticks tore Marian’s bare feet. She hadn’t thought to grab her boots. Stupid. Something heavy struck Marian, and she flew sideways before hitting the ground with such force that the air shook from her lungs.
For an endless moment, she lay still, fighting to catch her breath. The shouts and yells and whoosh of flames seemed far away. The smoke filling the inky sky blacked out the moon and most of the stars. Marian blinked slowly, her vision swimming.
A great weight pressed down on Marian’s chest. For a moment she thought it was Johnny, and she fought to lift her hands so she could grab his, but instead, something vise-tight closed around them and shoved them back against the earth.
Cold metal dragged down Marian’s face.
“Pretty girl.” The voice was so close Marian could feel the muggy fog of it against her mouth. She gasped and bucked up, but the man on top of her was twice her size, and his blade was pressed just beneath her ear.
“Shhh,” the man said. Spittle flew from his mouth. “Don’t want to cut your pretty face, do I?” He bared his yellow teeth at Marian. “Not yet, anyway.”
Smoke and tears stung Marian’s eyes. In all her life, she had never felt so full of rage, or so helpless, and to feel both of them at the same time…. A scream pressed against the roof of her mouth, but she knew in the deepest part of her heart that if she let it out, the man would slice her throat.
Before another thought could break through the red hatred crowding her mind, the man howled and hurled his body away. Johnny scrambled after him, a burning branch in his hand. As she watched, horrified, Johnny thrust the torch into the man’s face. The sickening smell of charred flesh filled Marian’s nostrils. She curled in on herself and vomited.
“Up, up,” Johnny said desperately. He half shoved, half pulled Marian to her feet. They were running again, leaving the fire and the screams and the panic behind them.
QUIET. THE fighting ended as abruptly as it had begun. The chill of the stone floor had soaked through Marian’s muddy dress, but she hardly noticed. She sat with her arm looped through Johnny’s as they waited with the other villagers who had sought refuge inside the church’s walls. Friar Tuck prowled back and forth in front of them like a caged housecat, mopping his face with a damp rag clutched in his meaty hand. Marian’s eyes tracked his progress across the floor, then back again.
A heavy pounding on the door startled them all. Several people cried out in alarm. Marian tightened her grip on Johnny’s arm.
“Who goes?” Friar Tuck demanded, edging toward the door. His voice quaked. “This is a consecrated house of the Lord God himself.”
“Sir Garin” came a muffled voice.
The friar pulled the door open, and the knight lurched inside. Marian clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle her cry. The man was covered in dirt, ash, and what Marian could only assume was blood. His cloak was torn and muddy; his sword dangled limply from his hand.
Friar Tuck fell back, crossing himself.
“It’s finished,” Garin said. “Keep the children inside. Send out anyone strong enough to help carry the dead.”
The entire world lurched sideways. Marian was out the door before she even realized she was on her feet. Perhaps Johnny tried to stop her, or Friar Tuck, or even Sir Garin, but they didn’t—they couldn’t. Floodwater couldn’t have stopped her. She burst through the church door to find half of Abyglen sinking into smoldering ruins.
“Heaven and earth,” she breathed, skidding to a halt halfway down the hill.
The air was filled with the stench of the dead and the moans of the dying. Several farmhouses were nothing but ash and charred timber. Figures moved among the smoky ruins, carrying and dragging things Marian didn’t dare look at too closely.
At that moment someone charged up the hill. Too weary to be startled or scared or anything at all, Marian did nothing as the man closed in on her. Only when he called out her name in a broken voice did Marian recognize him.
“Marian,” Papa said hoarsely, snatching her up and shaking her. He cradled her face roughly in his filthy hands, looking her up and down. “Are you all right?”
It took a moment for Marian to respond. She nodded, unable to speak. She tried to swallow around her grief, but it clawed its way out anyway.
“Are you hurt anywhere?”
She shook her head and sobbed, burying her face against Papa’s chest. Behind her, footsteps approached.
“My daughter,” Papa said. He smoothed a hand over her head. “Take her back into the church.”
“Sir Erik…” Garin said softly. “The bodies—”
“She’s my daughter.”
“They’re all someone’s daughter.”
“Take her back,” Papa said fiercely. “She’s only fourteen. She doesn’t need to see this.”
The knight tried to take hold of Marian’s arm, and Marian might have let him. She might have let him take charge of her, lead her back to the church, if her gaze hadn’t landed on Johnny, who was standing just a few feet behind her, his face as white as winter’s first snow.
IT HELPED to think of them as bodies. This was not Mr. Bossard, the baker who had made the bread Marian ate every day for breakfast. That was not Mrs. Fresle, who had taught Marian to play the lute and who had buried four stillborn daughters. And this was not Laura, lying in a foot of mud, her nightdress soaked through with grime and filth.
Laura deserved to be buried in her best dress—the green one she had worn for the king—but it had surely burned. The best Marian could do was to wash Laura’s face and hands—no, to wash the body, for this wasn’t Laura anymore—and rebraid her disheveled hair. Papa wrapped Laura’s body in his cloak, and he and another knight laid her in the grave beside Eliahkim. Johnny watched silently, his hands balled into fists and tears streaking down his sooty cheeks.
He did not speak as Papa began shoveling dirt into the grave, just walked over and held out his hand for the spade. Papa gave it. He clapped Johnny on the shoulder, just once, then turned and walked away.
Marian stood by the grave for a long time, but Johnny never said a word. Eventually one of the women laid a hand on her shoulder. “There are others that need tending to,” she said, and Marian followed her.
Three of the king’s men had been killed, and another was nearly there. His leg had been severed at the knee, and nothing seemed to slow the bleeding. He would be dead by nightfall. A dozen villagers were dead. A dozen more were injured. Friar Tuck opened the doors of the church, which even the bandits hadn’t been hellish enough to touch, and spread out blankets for the wounded.
They burned the bandits facedown in a fire set beyond the fence of the village. Friar Tuck watched the fire for a very long time, then turned without a word and walked back to the church.
By sunset the fires were all out, and the knight was dead. There was so little of the village left. Those who had lost their homes were cloistered together in the church, trying to sleep on the hard stone floor and taking turns to tend to their injured neighbors. Marian hadn’t eaten all day, but her hands were covered in blood she didn’t have the energy to wash away, and she wasn’t hungry besides. She wasn’t sure she would ever get the stench of burned flesh out of her nose.
She found Johnny sitting alone at the end of a long corridor, his head resting on his forearms. Marian slid down the wall beside him.
“Leave me alone,” he said quietly, not lifting his head.
“I’m so desperately sorry, Johnny,” Marian said. She dearly wished to reach out to him—to offer him comfort somehow—but didn’t know how.
“Go away.”
“Johnny—”
“I said go away!” Johnny roared. He pushed her hard, and she fell over, cracking her head against the stone floor.
Tears sprang to her eyes. Normally she would have shoved him back or hit him even harder, but this wasn’t normal. There wasn’t anything usual about this. Nothing made sense.
Marian swiped at her eyes as a shadow fell over them.
“Come,” Papa said. He held out a hand and helped Marian up. “Leave him alone for a while.”
Johnny tipped his face up to hers. There was something hard in his eyes now—something dark. It was as though a bolt had been thrown across a door, shutting him away from her.
“I really am sorry,” she said softly.
Johnny looked back down. “I said go away.”
She went.
SOMETIME IN the night, a wailing started.
More death.
Marian covered her ears with her hands and curled into a ball.
“THE NEW guard will be here soon,” Papa said to her the next morning when she rose, stiff and achy from her fitful sleep on the hard floor.
Marian looked at him dumbly. “What?”
“The new guard,” he said again. “With the events of the past day, it would be unwise for the king, God save him, to ride without reinforcements. Two men set out for Nottingham yesterday and should be back with soldiers anytime.”
Marian pressed her fingers against her eyelids. The king. She had forgotten he was even in Abyglen. Where had he been yesterday while they buried their dead? Where had he been when her village burned? What did a king do when his people were slaughtered?
“You should wash,” Papa went on. “Some of the women have brought dresses and cloaks, and you’ll feel better if you wash before you change.”
Marian couldn’t argue with that. Blood was crusted under her fingernails and ground into the lines of her palms.
“We’ll ride as soon as the new guard comes.”
“Ride where?”
“To Nottingham.”
Marian shook the cobwebs from her head. She could see that Papa was trying to explain something to her, but try as she might, she couldn’t make sense of it. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
Papa sighed and leaned forward, taking Marian’s hands in his. “Marian….”
“I’m not going to Nottingham,” Marian said, thinking of the old hunting lodge on the Littles’ farm that she and Papa shared. Of course, with Papa gone so often in service to the king, she was at Johnny’s home more often than her own.
They had both burned. Marian had nothing save the bloodstained dress on her back.
“Of course you are,” Papa said. “You know you can’t stay here.”
“For how long are we going?”
“Marian,” Papa said, as though she were quite stupid.
“But Abyglen is my home.”
“You must come, Marian. Who would take care of you?”
“I don’t need taking care of,” Marian said. Something like panic was pressing in on her. She had asked Papa to take her to Nottingham a thousand times over, but she’d never meant to move there. She’d only ever wanted to see the castle, to see the place where Papa went when he was away from her. “But everyone else—Papa, half the village is gone. Our neighbors are dead. Who will rebuild?”
“You’re fourteen,” Papa said. “You can’t stay here alone. It isn’t safe.”
“And I’d be safer where?” Marian demanded. “In Nottingham? Under the wing of the king, who stood by as our neighbors were slaughtered? Is that what you think?”
Papa caught Marian by the arm. “Don’t say such things,” he said sharply. “Not to me, not to anyone. Do I make myself clear?”
“But—”
“It’s treason, Marian,” he hissed, shaking her.
Marian had seen her father angry before, but never like this. Bile burned the back of her throat; she snatched her arm out of his grasp. “I’m not leaving Johnny. Not now, not after—no, I won’t go.”
“You will go where I command it, Marian.”
Marian gaped at him. Never had Papa spoken to her so. “Or?”
“Or nothing. You will go and wash and change and come back here at once. We ride within the hour.”
“Then we will take Johnny with us.” Marian set her jaw and glared at Papa. She was fourteen and had just buried the only mother she’d ever known. She wasn’t a child, not any longer.
“Marian.” Papa took in a shaky breath and dragged a hand over his face. His eyes were shadowed and dark “This is not…. Laura had a sister, Kathryn, who lives just down the river in Loxley. She and her husband will take Johnny.”
“Absolutely not.”
“He left this morning.”
Marian sucked in a sharp breath. “Left?” she asked, and her voice was barely a whisper. “What do you mean, left?”
“Two of the others rode out with him this morning. They left at first light.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, he didn’t leave. He can’t have done.”
“He did,” Papa said. “He thought—”
“Then I’ll go after him,” Marian said. She stood. “I know how to ride a bloody horse.”
“Stop,” Papa said sharply. “He lost his mother and his father yesterday, Marian. This is what he wanted.”
Everything Marian had been fighting for two days—the fear, the grief, the impotent rage—flooded into her. She dropped back to the floor, covered her face with her hands, and wept.
MARIAN’S ENTIRE left side was covered in mottled, purple bruises. She didn’t bother being careful with them as she bathed in the river under the watchful eye of one of the village women. Normally she would have raged against such an intrusion, but now she hardly noticed it.
Marian was tall for her age. No one could find a frock to fit her, so she dressed in a pair of leggings and a soft tunic with sleeves so long they came down over her hands.
“We’ll buy you a dozen new dresses in Nottingham,” Papa said as he helped her roll up the sleeves. Marian just looked at him. She couldn’t imagine a thing she cared about less.
The king’s men were readying their horses for the journey to Nottingham. The fanfare was gone now, the pageantry replaced by tightly gripped swords and jaws made of iron. Very few of the villagers had gathered to see them off, and Marian didn’t look at the ones who had. There was no one left she wanted to see. She took hold of the pommel of the saddle on the horse given to her for the trek and swung herself up. Papa handed her the reins. She took them without speaking. And when the long line of knights and horses began to slowly wind their way out of Abyglen, Marian followed without looking back.