HUNTINGDONSHIRE
FRIDAY, 17TH DAY OF JANUARY
HIS NAME WAS GREY Symon, and he was dead, and that, too, was Marion’s fault.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
Nobody had known him well, nor had they tried. Such was the way all winter. Stragglers joined the group for days or weeks and might speak to nobody. There was no point in growing attached to someone who was unlikely to stick around.
Grey Symon collapsed not so long after they crossed the river Welland and entered the royal forest of Huntingdon. The entirety of Huntingdonshire was a royal forest, which meant only the Earl Robert’s men were allowed to hunt its game. So even when they saw a handful of deer or signs of a wild boar, Marion had to refuse those who begged to hunt. She couldn’t jeopardize their new relationship before it even began.
So old Grey Symon fell, hungry, surrounded by food.
A young girl, one of the Harnetts, said he’d given her the last of his bread the day earlier.
That wasn’t the worst of it.
They had to debate—good God, they had to honestly debate—what to do with his body. With everyone starving, they couldn’t delay the whole group long enough to bury him. They didn’t have the tools, much less the strength, to do so.
But that wasn’t the worst part, either.
The worst was that they decided so quickly. Because the facts were against them. They couldn’t even carry his body. So they left him, seated beneath a yew tree, propped up as if he were napping. Somehow that made it easier than leaving him lying down. Tuck mumbled a blessing, and they moved on.
Once upon a time, Marion convinced a group of refugees to leave their lives in the Sherwood Forest to find a new home in Huntingdon. They could have stayed and waited for Will Scarlet’s reinforcements from the city. Instead they left, and an old man named Grey Symon starved to death along the way.
Once upon a time, Marion brought a group of debtors to the hermit lord, Walter of Locksley, who agreed to pay their dues in exchange for their vassalage. A community began to thrive, which thereupon brought the attention of the county’s tax assessors. They burnt his manor to the ground and Lord Walter with it.
“You won’t be very helpful if you fall off your horse,” Charley Dancer whispered, with no small amount of sarcasm. “Your head has been bobbing off to sleep for the last mile. You look drunk.”
Marion opened her mouth for a witty response, but was sabotaged by an unrelenting yawn.
There were six horses in total, four of them on loan from Lord Robert. If not for that fact, the group would undoubtedly be eating horsemeat at this moment. Instead Marion could let a few people ride by horse the final distance. Charley was a healthy man, but his lame leg kept him slow. Three of their eldest members struggled even on horseback, barely able to stay saddled. Marion and Sir Amon tethered those mounts behind their own, in the hopes of reaching their destination before nightfall.
“We can stop, if only for a few minutes,” Charley repeated. “You need it.”
Ahead, Amon turned back, his hard jaw speaking to his disapproval.
Marion craned her neck backward but the sun was set, a dull grey blanket muting any light the sky might offer. The trees in this part of Huntingdon Forest were thin and sinewy, which had a queer gossamer beauty in daylight. But at dusk the limbs turned into knuckle-ridden fingers and spiders’ legs, a maze of unfamiliar shapes that beguiled the imagination. The rest of the group was hours behind her now, and would be walking this path in near pitch blackness.
The sooner she made it to the castle, she could start preparing for their arrival. Yes, she felt wretched for riding ahead while the others slogged on through their endless trek, but she could help best by making sure Lord Robert was ready to receive them.
That’s what she told herself.
“I’m fine,” Marion lied.
Charley’s face pursed into something that probably started as a sympathetic smile, but ended in a painful wince. It was almost enough to make Marion laugh.
“Here come the infamous thieves of Nottingham!” she mocked, picturing their beleaguered group limping up to the gates of Huntingdon Castle. “We should have let ourselves be captured back in the Sherwood, just to shame them into realizing who it was they were chasing.”
Charley searched her face for something. “Well, we’re not exactly all innocent.” He grimaced. “We’ve … killed.”
Once upon a time, Marion arranged a marriage for herself to the High Sheriff of Nottingham, that she might influence the county’s policies toward greater tolerance to debtors. But she failed to tell her friends the details of her plans, and they mistakenly tried to rescue her. Half of them died in the attempt, including the man she loved.
“I wasn’t there,” Charley was saying, “when Captain Gisbourne was killed. Wish I were, though.”
“You should be glad you weren’t.” She could only imagine how long Charley Dancer would last in a swordfight. “I’m not saying killing is ever the right choice, but when the alternative is death, I don’t see how we can be judged for that.”
“What about earlier?” Charley asked. “I joined on after … after Bernesdale. Didn’t we kill some Guardsmen there, too?”
She closed her eyes. As if she needed more entries into the catalogue of destruction that was her life.
“I wasn’t there, either.” She preferred not to think about it. “John Little would know. Maybe Will or Elena killed a few Guardsmen, but nobody who’s still with us should be punished for that. If you’re saying we deserve this … no. It’s just me. I deserve this. This punishment. The rest of the group, they’re just trying to make it to the next meal.”
He digested this solemnly, then tried at another smile. “We’re not exactly a bunch of Robin Hoods, are we?”
The implication pinched at her heart, which could hardly suffer more damage. “Don’t be so sure of that,” she said. “Robin Hood was just a name. It’s the name of anyone who tries to help another before themselves. Anyone can be a Robin Hood if they just pull their head out of their ass for a minute or two.”
Charley’s face tried to eat itself. “I wish I had known him better.”
“Robin?” Marion tried not to react. “No you don’t. He was the worst Robin Hood of all.”
Once upon a time, Marion defended an elderly woman who sold salted meats from town to town, who had been accused of passing cat meat off as rabbit. To prove her innocence, Marion arranged for an inspection of the meat by an expert butcher from St. Albans, who then purposefully spoilt her entire stock to protect his business from her competition.
Once upon a time, Marion championed an apprentice falconer at baronial court, who had been replaced after falling from his horse and injuring his leg. But to be present for his case, he needed to climb a staircase—whereupon he tripped and injured himself further. The injury, which might have mended if he had kept off it, worsened—and he lost the leg.
Once upon a time, Marion thought she could make the world a better place. Even if it was a tiny improvement, for a few people, in a little parcel of land, it was something. But all her stories ended the same.
“WE’RE ALMOST THERE. THAT spire way up ahead…” she pointed at the distant black spear, several rolling hillocks away, “… is the priory at Hinchingbrooke. Once we pass it, we’ll be at Huntingdon Castle in no time.”
The road would curve down to the north bank of the Great Ouse, where they would cross and rise up again to Huntingdon Castle.
She was riding beside Amon now, Charley and the three others lingering behind. The trees had thinned again and the last of the sky’s lingering purple was devoured by black, but the path at least was certain. She’d traveled it a dozen times, though this would be her last.
“Lord Robert has promised all of us amnesty,” she told her sworn protector. “All of us.”
Amon stiffened at her words, though he did not contest them. She knew he had many opinions on her exploits of late, made all the heavier by his own dubious standing in his knighthood. Though her father’s charge was for Amon to protect Marion in any circumstance, that order had alarmingly uncertain edges. If Marion were truly an outlaw, it begged the question of whether it was lawful of him to protect her, even if he committed no crimes himself in doing so.
As if he were not already plagued by people unjustly questioning his integrity.
“If Lord Robert can forgive a group accused of assassinating the Sheriff,” she pushed into the words, “I don’t think anyone else has anything to worry about.”
She knew he heard the words she didn’t say. He pivoted on his horse to accept her attempt at discretion. “As you say, my lady.”
“Lord Robert will protect you,” Marion insisted. “And if he doesn’t, I’ll punch him, in the face, very hard.”
He gave her a rare smile. “That’s absolutely unbelievable, and yet oddly reassuring.”
“I mean it.” She arched her shoulders. “I may even call him a name.”
“I wouldn’t want you to go too far.” Sir Amon’s long face tilted her way. “Perhaps a withering gaze instead, I couldn’t put you out.”
“Withering gaze it is.” She practiced one on Amon, which caused him to do whatever is opposite of wither. “But honestly, Lord Robert might as well be one of us. He’s been our main benefactor. He’s purchased so much of the jewelry we’ve stolen from traveling nobles that he must have … some sort of … treasure cave.”
Amon raised an eyebrow. “A treasure cave?”
“Listen, I’m exhausted. I actually don’t know what he’s done with all the trinkets I’ve sold him. I’m guessing he trades them back to his political rivals in exchange for favors, but I don’t actually know, and I definitely don’t care. I don’t have any necklaces for him this time. My only gift is a broken horde of sick and hungry people, and he’s offered to take every one of us in. He’s a better Robin Hood than any of us.”
The earl was literally saving their lives, and Marion could never repay him for that gift.
While Robin … Robin had destroyed everything on his way out of the world.
Soon, her group would have safety again, and that wrong would be righted. But the passing of one fear gave immediately to another. She would stay with them in Huntingdon for a short time, to see them settled, but she would not call this home. There would be another cause, another calling, another foolish urge to do something lionhearted, and Marion doubted very much she’d be smart enough to ignore it.
Perhaps Charley was right. Perhaps it was time for her to rest, from all of it.
Will Scarlet, thrusting his finger at burnt trees.
“We’re almost there,” Marion said again, not necessarily about the castle.
Once upon a time, Marion tried to use her influence—as a lady of a notable house—to help others. To do what other women never could, those who were voiceless by tradition or by servitude. Her family tree had King Richard himself, and wheresoever he chose to impose himself upon the world they called him Lionheart for it. For the same acts, Marion was called a nuisance. An agitator. She was left to wonder if her failures were truly her own, or the inevitable result of a world determined against her. For wheresoever Marion tried to be a Lionheart, the world was worse for it.
Had she stayed silent, lived the life of a maid, how many people would be the better?
RIDERS FROM THE CASTLE greeted them at the bridge over the Great Ouse, trailing green banners with gold trim. Relief poured over her aching body. Their escort led them up the long gentle hill to Huntingdon Castle, and she had to remind herself that this was real. All of it seemed impossible.
Huntingdon Castle was not much to call impressive, even in daylight. In the mottled darkness, it was little more than a black shadow wrapped around a hill. A single circular curtain wall enclosed the castle’s lone courtyard and manors, broken only once by two squat, square keeps that framed a long stone ramp up a steeper hill. Upon that hill was the castle’s lone tower, distinguishable now only by the flickering fires shining in its topmost stories.
“The Heart Tower,” Marion whispered to Charley. “If you hear anyone call it the Tower de Senlis, don’t let that stick. Three generations of men named Simon de Senlis controlled Huntingdon Castle, before Henry the Younger’s rebellion.”
Charley looked up at the thick silhouette of the tower. “And they supported young Henry?”
“Not at all. But they lost the castle to the Scots, and couldn’t reclaim it on their own. After the rebellion was squashed, King Henry the Elder punished the de Senlis family for their failures. The earldom was granted to Lord Robert’s father, who was known as the Heart of Huntingdon. He passed last year, and Lord Robert ascended to earl and rechristened the Tower de Senlis in respect to his father. So the Heart Tower now.” Marion reinforced the words. “Calling it by its old name would be quite disrespectful to Lord Robert.”
Another heart-ful name, she considered, for a man best skilled at cutting into them.
Passing through the gates of the castle might have brought tears to her eyes, if the cold night wind was not already doing so. Within the curtain wall was an open space lit regularly with braziers, warming the faces of the various buildings that formed its perimeter. Awaiting in the center of the courtyard was a small congregation, huddled around the largest fire. Though her vision was foggy from fatigue, Marion had no problem identifying Lord Robert, Earl of Huntingdon, who stepped forward to welcome her.
His frame was lean and tall, his pose was somehow always perfect, as if he were constantly prepared for the danger of someone painting a portrait of him. That was his way, he had the presence of a prince but a mirth that made him everyone’s best friend. His dark golden hair and short beard had endearing touches of grey, and his face was most comfortable in a wide smile. This night he wore tall tanned riding boots and a simple green-and-gold doublet, half covered by an ornate brown demicape that clung to one shoulder and fell only to his thigh. He’d chosen it for her, Marion recognized, as she’d commented upon it favorably during a previous visit. He’d claimed it was purchased from an Italian merchant in Chipping Ongar—or Epping, maybe—and Marion had pointed out that it was very unlikely to be Italian. He hadn’t cared, he just liked the way the cape looked.
“I was growing worried!” Lord Robert called as they approached, with no formalities or greetings. “Any difficulties on the road?”
“Nothing but,” Marion answered, her lungs straining to raise her voice.
At Lord Robert’s side was his wife, the Countess of Huntingdon. Lady Magdalena de Bohun was as tall as her husband, made taller by the nest of blond hair pulled sharply atop her head. Her modest blue dress had seen some work lately, and her thin face was full of scrutiny. Marion had not interacted much with Lady Magdalena during her previous visits, but it was obvious the countess held as much respect and power in the castle as Lord Robert himself.
“We have made terrible time, I’m afraid,” Marion explained. “The rest should be here in three or four hours if they don’t stop, or early morning if they do. I hate to bring such a burden upon you, but we have no food. Whatever you are able to spare—”
“We’ll take care of them,” Robert assured her, placing his hand on her horse’s neck, clicking his tongue to calm her. “I meant you, did you have any difficulties?”
Marion wasn’t even sure what the question meant. Her thoughts were too heavy. “Hm? No. A bit, yes, some nosy travelers. Nothing worth mentioning.”
“Lady Fitzwalter, I’m glad to see you returned.” The countess smiled simply, and snapped to her stablemen. “Let us take care of your horses.”
“Thank you, she needs water more than I do.”
A thick man in high boots—Lord Robert’s horsemaster—took her mare by the reins, then paused and looked up at her in anticipation.
“Your ladyship?” he asked gently. “We shall take good care of your horses, I assure you.”
Marion stared blankly for a moment, not understanding the problem, and then noticed that both Sir Amon and Charley had already dismounted, remitting their horses to Lord Robert’s men. Her three elderly riders were already being shuffled off toward a nearby keep—how had she missed that? She completely forgot herself, and tried to shake it away, slipping down off the saddle. “Yes, I’m sorry. It has been a … harrowing week.”
She stumbled as her boots found the ground, and Lord Robert moved to steady her, his hand at the small of her back.
“Thank you. There is so much to do.”
“Perhaps you ought to rest first,” Robert offered.
“They haven’t eaten,” she said to nobody, trying to blink away something in her eyes. “Some are wounded, we’ll need to make room enough—”
If she fainted, it was for only a moment. Amon was holding her now, his arms supporting all her weight around her waist.
“My lady, I think it would be best if you lay down.”
To him, at last, she conceded. Robert’s voice faded away behind her, and Marion was dimly aware that she was being escorted away. Warmer air, then wood beneath her feet, then stone, then her weight disappeared as she sank into a mattress and sleep was upon her.
Once upon a time, Marion brought a group of starving outlaws to a castle in Huntingdon to start a new life …