BENEATH NOTTINGHAM
THAT WAS THE THING about Caitlin, some thought she was tough or cruel. A hard woman, she’d heard that used before, as if it were supposed to mean something. She was no harder or tougher than the environment she lived in, but she weathered it better. Caitlin had the opportunity to take all the bitter stings the world had given her and turn them into something else, rather than be turned into something else herself. Some people shrank in the face of calamity, they withered and died under its pressure. Not Caitlin. When life gave her shit, she took it out on something else.
Right now, she was taking it out on Will Scarlet’s face.
She felt the impact drive down her forearm, right to her elbow with a long reverberating squeal. She had wrapped her hand in thick leather straps to protect her knuckles, but she could still feel every blow in the ache of her bones. She wanted to stretch her fingers and massage her palm, but she wanted to punch Will Scarlet more. So she went for that second option.
His head recoiled from her fist and hung limp—some pathetic expletive dripped from his lips, but she couldn’t hear him. His body sagged from his shoulders, which were suspended up by Dawn Dog and Ricard the Ruby. Neither could conceal their discomfort very well, which was for the better. Nobody liked this sort of thing—she would have worried if either was still smiling. But punishment was punishment, and did Will Scarlet ever deserve more of it.
“You want to lie to me again?” she asked, hoping he would.
“Fuck…” was all he could say, little bursts of blood spittling out. But his head started bobbing up and down. “Yeah, yeah it was me.”
Caitlin frowned. She was really looking forward to giving him one more square. But she knew how to train dogs, and you can’t punish them for doing what you wanted. For most mutts, you had to know exactly how to hit them.
One hit makes you a joke.
Two make you serious.
Three make you an enemy.
She didn’t want Will Scarlet’s fear, she wanted his obedience. But with men, it was always hard to tell how many hits it took to be taken seriously. And Will Scarlet ran on the more rabid side. She’d thought he’d taken his blows already, that he’d become a content little sheep—which was far more useful than her original hopes to kick him out of the city on sight. But apparently this little sheep had been up to no good.
“I know it was you,” she said, handing him a rag to wipe his face. “I need to know how many others there are out there. What other surprises are waiting for us.”
“Why does it matter?” His voice, weak, barely louder than his breath. The rag, held to his eye. Blood, dripped black and red across half his face, which was already swelling and turning blue. Cait took a moment to enjoy it. She’d brought him deep into the tunnels for this, far through their sandstone mazes that he might never find his way out if they were to leave him here alone. They were in the sphere of a cesspit, long ago farmed out for manure, but forever retaining a stank of bile. They were far enough from the Lions Den that his screams would never make it back there. Alfie wouldn’t approve of her doing this, necessary as it was.
“It matters because of who you claim to be,” she answered, signaling for Ricard to bring a bucket of well water. They had passed several low tunnels to get here that had holes down that were always filled with water—clean water, the only good part of living beneath the city. She dipped her hands in, to scrub the blood from her fingertips. “And since you seem to keep forgetting, I’ll say it another time. Red Fox is Robin Hood now. So when I find out you’re murdering people in the name of Robin Hood, that danger lands on us. Not you.”
“I didn’t do it in the name of Robin Hood.” His blood dripping on the floor. Pat pat. “I just … did it.”
“Why did you do it? Who were they?” she asked, dully, because she didn’t really care. She already hated that she’d learned something valuable from her meeting with her father. “Who were these two nobles to you? This Lord of Brayden, what the fuck did he do to Will Scarlet?”
“Nothing.” His voice was a whisper. “We came upon them on the way to Nottingham, Arthur and David and I. And Stutely. We took what we could, nothing special. Nothing we hadn’t done a hundred times…” His sentence lingered like a guilty child. She flexed her fingers, letting the faint sound of the stretching leather speak for itself. “And then I went back. I don’t know why. I went back … and opened their carriage … and just … just bam bam bam … in the chest … and that was it. Barely a few seconds. Then we were on our way.”
“Just you?”
Pat pat. “Just me. The others didn’t know.”
Caitlin took a full breath. “I hear the woman was raped. You do that?”
“Wha—?” His face keeled up, a seemingly genuine confusion across it. “No, no. I just … I just killed her. Both of them, in and out, fast. On my own. I don’t know why.”
She exhaled. “You don’t know why.”
His body slumped, heaved, slumped. “I don’t know why.”
She’d been pulling her punches before, but this time she followed clean through. Her momentum was almost too much to stop, and Dawn Dog had to take her weight even as he flinched from the shock of the sudden violence. For a bear of a man, he could be surprisingly weak. Nobody would ever call the Dawn Dog a hard woman.
She could see it in Will Scarlet’s face, through the blood and bruises, that this was the hit that mattered. His adolescent spark was gone, replaced with fear, cowardice in his eyes, his jaw quivered and blood drained from his burst lips. “I wanted to kill them…” The words were nearly indecipherable, bubbling through his breaths. “I wanted to kill them for being alive. For being happy and alive. Sometimes I want to kill everyone, I want to kill everyone who isn’t dead.”
“Why?”
“Because it isn’t fair…” tears came down, following the path of the blood down his cheeks, “… it isn’t fair that they’re alive, and she’s dead…”
His breath choked, his shoulders seized. Cait signaled for Dawn Dog and Ricard to let him go, and then Will Scarlet wept on the floor, oblivious to their presence. Silently. He did not wail, his body just crunched into a ball and he moaned out whatever breath his body could take.
Eventually he slowed, he held his head in his hands and breathed in deeply, bringing himself back to reason.
“Grief is a bitch,” Caitlin said, knowing from experience. “But so am I. You can’t kill anyone you want, whenever you want. This happened before you came to Nottingham, so you’re lucky. If you’d done this after we’d met you, I’d carve you in half, from asshole to throat. Unless you admit to it, right now. Don’t make me ask twice. Anything else you done I should know about?”
He shook his head and squinted. One of his eyes was now swollen shut, and he had to twist to see her with the other. She stood up again and clenched her fist, but his hand raised limply to defend himself. “Nothing, no, no…”
“What about the hands in the stables?” she asked.
“The stables?” His hand fell. “That’s not you? Heard about them, yes … thought it was Freddy…”
She repositioned her fist, but he didn’t move at all. He had nothing left in him to lie, and she believed him. It was a stretch to think Scarlet was behind the behandings, since the first had happened before he came to the city, but it was worth asking. Someone else was out there soiling Robin Hood’s name, but Alfie had already dismissed that. Probably just another rival, trying to make hell for them, better ignored.
“Alright, your men, then?” Just to be sure. “Do I need to ask them a few questions, too?”
“No no,” he said. “They’re not like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like me.” Will Scarlet’s arms seemed useless to him, they tried to do something but flopped around instead. “They’re good people. They’re not like me. They’re not … they’re not broken.”
Cait exhaled heavily, as if the utter truth of it had swept through the cave tunnel and taken away all the tension and danger. She nodded solemnly to Dawn Dog and Ricard, for both of them to leave. They eagerly scooped up two of the three lanterns from the floor to hobble back down the tunnels to the Lions Den. They did so silently, they made haste.
“I haven’t told Alfred,” she said, once she was alone with him. “And I’d rather not. He has a soft spot for you, fool that he is, but because of it he’ll treat you far harsher if he finds out. He’ll kill you, I mean.” She spelled it out, realizing he was in no condition to put two and two together. “I’m willing to keep this secret, if you’re willing to keep a different secret in exchange. I’ve got a task for you I’d prefer he not know about.”
Scarlet snorted, black goop shot from his nose. “You want me to do something behind Alfred’s back?”
“Quit drooling, this secret’s nothing compared to yours. Just a difference of opinion between me and him on how to proceed on something, so I’d rather have you take care of it so we don’t have to argue about it no more. If he finds out you did it at my command, he’ll only be upset at me for all of thirty seconds. So don’t pretend you can use this as leverage on me, you shit bag.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” lied the shit bag.
“Yes you were. If you weren’t, you’d be too daft to be here at all.”
He had no clever retort, just a slight catch in his breath. “What’s the job?”
“Gerome Artaud, the saint of a trademaster you’ve been following—apparently the only man in Nottingham with no vices. We would’ve preferred to blackmail him, but since you can’t find any dirt on him, we’ll have to get what we want in more creative ways.”
Scarlet nodded. “You want me to threaten him?”
“Not good enough. He’s clearly not very imaginative, so he needs proof of what we’ll do to him.” She bent lower to match his eyes, making sure he felt every word that followed, as something that could just as easily happen to him. “Take a finger. Let him pick which one, then take a different one. Pull the fingernail first. Then flay it to the bone, draw it out. But cut it clean off and burn the nub when you’re done. Don’t want him to die of the rot.”
With only one lantern left, his face was half-black, shadows filling the sockets of his eyes like his blood in the crags of the ground. “And this would make us square?”
“It would mean I don’t have to put you down, at least.” She wiped her hands on his shirt. “If Alfie finds out you did it, you say it was your idea. You know him, he means too well sometimes. He’s not like you. He’s not like us.”
“I know.” Will shivered. “The real Robin Hood was the same way.”
Pat pat. She froze until he stared back at her. “Alfred Fawkes is the real Robin Hood. That’s the last time I tell you.”
Pat pat. “Got it. Sorry.”
“Don’t bring your men on this, either. I need David focused on teaching us archery. You’ll do this alone.” He nodded, and at last she helped him find his footing. “Get gone. Clean up. I’ll get you details shortly.”
His shuffle down the tunnel was piteous, but Caitlin felt nothing for him. Will Scarlet was a weapon too dangerous to use, he was a knife whose handle was wrapped in iron barb. Rather than wait and see what more damage Scarlet could do before the greenbeard job was ready for him—as she’d been doing for weeks—she could simply use him to expedite it. This job would take care of the Artaud problem, the greenbeard problem, and the Scarlet problem all at once. It was something of a shame there was only one person around to enjoy what she’d done.
“Sorry I didn’t let you in on that,” she said to Rob o’the Fire, still watching from the dark cranny on the other side of the cesspit. “I hope watching was something, though.”
“It wasn’t the worst,” he said. “But yeah, I would’ve liked to give him back just a little of what he gave me.” Even as he spoke she could hear the wheeze in his lungs, the lingering damage Will Scarlet had done him that first night. How Alfie had not seen the danger immediately was absolutely beyond her. But that was why a good man like him needed a hard woman like Cait.
“Pushing hard on the trademaster then, eh?” Rob asked, coming closer to look at Scarlet’s blood on the cave wall.
“Don’t see another way.” Cait scraped her boot on the ground. “We need Artaud to get mead to the greenbeard, so we can get all the access we want to the Trip, and wrap that up. It’s been dragging on too long.”
“Yeah. But it’s just … I mean, cutting off his finger? I don’t want to second-guess you none, but he hasn’t crossed us, right? Why so bloody?”
“Don’t worry, those were just threats for Scarlet. He’ll barely even touch Artaud. Just going to scare him enough to know we can get to him, so’s we can make some proper demands.”
Rob inhaled deeply, trying to figure it out. “What? So Scarlet … isn’t going to hurt him?”
“He’s going to try.” She looked him square. “But I’ve got a job for you, too.”