PROLOGUE

 

Marienne FitzWilliam had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Because she had not taken any vow of seclusion, she was often sent to the market in Nottingham to trade the linens woven by the nuns of Kirklees. It happened one day, she was caught in a circle of sunlight, frowning in concentration over a selection of needles and spindles, when the bored and lecherous eyes of a town official came to settle on the abundance of glossy chestnut curls. His name was Reginald de Braose and he was in the service of the Sheriff of Nottingham, Guy de Gisbourne.

An ugly man, short of height, over-bulked in stature, de Braose’s face was ravaged with the scars of a childhood disease. One eye was coated in a milky-white film, red-rimmed, and leaked fluids that more often than not were left to dry to a yellow crust in the corners. His hair, brown as dung, lay in greasy spikes against his neck and poked out from beneath the battered iron dome of his helm. His armour was not the finest. He wore no coif to protect his neck—not that any common man would be fool enough to attack him. His mail hauberk bore definite signs of combat and was ill repaired in the sleeves and hem; a sorry chain of broken links hung like a frayed iron thread down his thigh. The surcoat he wore was dull blue with more patches stained from food and drink than were clean. His hose bagged at the knee. The blade of his sword was pitted and chipped and betrayed no gleam, not even in the bright midday sun.

He looked to the left and to the right, casually nodding to the half-dozen soldiers who lurked in the shadows. Only one was too preoccupied to nod back. He had a hand down the front of a blowsy wench and was too busy fondling and pinching to notice his captain’s glare.

De Braose and his men had been at the market since dawn. It was the fourth Saturday they had been up before the crowing of the rooster, turned out of warm beds with empty bellies and foul tempers; this day, like most others, they had positioned themselves at various vantage points in the market square watching for strangers, following them, hoping one might lead them to rich rewards. This was not the first time de Braose had seen the little dark-haired maid. She lived and worked for the nuns at Kirklees Abbey, but she was the most interesting morsel to come into view so far since the villagers had taken to hiding most of their wives and daughters—even the ugly ones—whenever there were soldiers around.

Yeomen and peasants had started taking to the forests as well, especially those likely to be picked up by the soldiers and dragged off to the castle for work details. Overtaxed and half starving, they hid what little of value they had; it was up to the king’s men to find it and pry it out of them by whatever methods they deemed necessary. Men forced to work in the castle could pay a fine and free themselves. Women forced to whore could pay a fine—after their usefulness was fully exhausted—and return to their mud-and-wattle homes. Those who thought to struggle or resist found themselves missing ears or fingers, toes or tongues by way of example to others. It was the same everywhere in England. The king’s treasury was empty and he demanded it be filled. Whether he had to steal taxes from the rich or bleed it from the poor, it mattered not so long as his stores of jewels and gold were replenished.

In the eleven years since he had taken the throne, John Plantagenet had emptied the treasury many times over. He had lost the hereditary Angevin lands in Normandy and Brittany to his ineffectual leadership, and turned most of the English barons against him by using cruelty, repression, and murder as a means of ruling. Anyone who possessed anything of value found himself robbed of it, or fined for having it. The king’s men scoured the land, inventing new tortures, confiscating properties, ravaging women, and more and more nobles were questioning their wisdom all those years ago in having supported John’s claim to the throne when they might have had the young and malleable Arthur of Brittany.

Their self-doubts only raised more rumbles of dissent. Where was Prince Arthur? What had happened to him? What had happened to his sister Eleanor? They were the offspring of John’s older brother Geoffrey, and, by right of succession, Arthur should have inherited the throne upon King Richard’s death. Instead, John had snatched the crown for himself and had thrown Arthur and his sister in prison. Neither had been seen since. There had been rumors and speculation, of course. A body had been found floating in the River Seine not six months after Arthur’s disappearance. Badly decomposed, it could not be readily identified, but it had bright golden hair and the scraps of clothing it wore were of the finest, richest quality. Then and now there were murmured convictions that John had had his nephew murdered, even that he had committed the abhorrent crime himself in one of his fits of rage.

As to the fate of Arthur's sister, Eleanor, she had simply vanished off the face of the earth. There was one whispered tale of her confinement in Corfe Castle, of a daring rescue staged by unknown knights, but the whispers faded when it came to the end of the tale. If she had been rescued, where had she been taken? Who could have possibly kept her hidden for so many years, and why, why, when England was embroiled in civil unrest, would she not have been brought forth out of obscurity to lay her rightful claim to the throne?

The king was well aware of the resentment and hostility brewing around him. He had tried, and failed, to gather an army this past spring to cross the Channel and reclaim his lost territories in Normandy from King Philip of France. Less than a third of his barons had answered his call to arms, and to repay them for the insult, he had sent them home in disgrace and hired mercenaries in their stead at a great cost to England’s treasury. Defeated by indifference before he began, he had suffered an abysmal loss in Flanders, at the Battle of Bouvines, and had once again been sent scurrying back to England, his tail firmly tucked between his legs.

His rage was then focused on his barons, namely those who had refused to join the ill-fated venture. He was the king! All of his subjects—nobles, clergy, knights, and peasants alike—were at his mercy, and he was determined to prove it, even if it meant fining every noble, burning every castle in England, and placing their inhabitants in prison!

To that end, he put vicious, brutal men in positions of power, giving them free rein to rape, steal, murder at whim. Guy de Gisbourne was one such tyrant who laid no claim to the possession of either a conscience or a willingness to show mercy. One of his first tasks, upon taking command of Nottingham Castle, had been to fill the donjons with men and women who owed a tax or were suspected of hoarding profits. His was a garrison of misfits and brutes, his authority was fire and sword, and few who defied him by word or deed lived to see another dawn. Those meager few swelled the ranks of the outlaws who had begun to live in the surrounding forests. Gisbourne had put high prices on their heads, and when they were caught, he had their bodies drawn and quartered, their various parts hung in the village square until the flesh turned black and fell off the bones.

Only last week Reginald de Braose and his men had caught an outlaw trying to visit his blind sister in the village of Edwinstow. They had taken both the outlaw and the sister to the sheriff’s court, where one had been sentenced to hang, the other to service the men of the garrison by way of an example to those relatives who might think to offer succour to their fugitive kinsmen.

 

Reginald de Braose watched the maid, Marienne, move away from the milliner’s stall and signaled his men. She would not waste time returning to the abbey now that her linens were sold and her purchases made. Kirklees was a two-hour walk from the village, most of it through forest thick enough to tint the air green, dense enough to muffle the loudest screams from unyielding virgins.

A friar was waiting at the edge of the village to escort her back to the abbey, but de Braose was not concerned; most of the graycloaks flew away like startled moths at the first glint of a sword blade. His men were another matter, for none of the soldiers in Nottingham liked to venture too deep into Sherwood. The trees seemed taller here, thicker, denser than anywhere else in England. It was said they were filled with ghostly sentries who whispered alarms and brought forth demons to slit the throats and spill the entrails of all those who came uninvited into the greenwood.

De Braose did not believe in ghosts or demons. He believed the woods were filled with outlaws and misfits, and he believed strongly in the reward of a thousand marks Gisbourne was offering for the capture of their leader. No one had ever seen him without the trademark hood that concealed his features, nor, in truth, could they tell one outlaw from another, for they all moved like silent, shapeless shadows through the trees. They dressed in drab greens and browns to blend with the undergrowth, their soft leather jerkins and linsey woolsey making them seem to be apparitions, moving from one glade to another like mist. The only warning of their presence was the faint hiss that came before their arrows struck.

Still, it was a warm day and the thought of sinking himself into such a tender morsel as this dark-haired novitiate was too sweet to resist. He pushed away from the airless patch of shade that had harbored him, signaling his men to follow.

 

“You seem distracted today, Friar,” Marienne remarked as she adjusted the weight of the package under her arm.

The monk turned and held her eyes a moment before responding with a self-conscious smile. “You were longer in the market than you should have been.”

“I had a difficult time finding everything on the abbess’s list,” she said, indicating the two bulky parcels he was carrying for her. “The sisters were short of many things—needles, spices, seed and such. And the tailor haggled longer than usual over the price he was willing to pay for the linens.”

“Everyone is suffering for the king’s greed these days. Coins are scarce, generosity a thing of the past. Did you get the herbs you needed for Sister Bertal?”

She nodded. “Thankfully, yes.”

He cast another veiled glance over his shoulder, and this time Marienne joined him in looking back at the tree-lined road. She could see nothing but the quiet stillness of the greenwood, the majesty of the tall oaks that stretched their leafy boughs high into the blue vault of the sky. So thick were the branches overhead that not much of the blue could be seen. Here and there, mottled patches allowed bright streamers of sunlight to slash through the latticework of branches and leaves, but by the time it reached the earth so far below, the light was diffused to a soft, blurry haze. And there were so many shades of green! The apple of young saplings, the emerald of ferns, the staunch vert of the firs, the varying jades, mosses, and olives of the towering oaks, ash, and yew. The air itself seemed shaded, lush with dew, shimmering like a jewel where the light touched upon it.

So many feared the unearthly silence, the cool shadows, the pungent scent of isolation, but Marienne loved it. She loved the long walk to Nottingham from Kirklees, and she had hoped this day, like many others, her companion might be cajoled into veering off the road and taking her deeper into the living heart of Sherwood.

One look at the worried frown on his face that morning had dispelled her hopes. He had tried his best to talk her out of going to Nottingham at all, claiming the sheriffs spies were everywhere, thick as fleas in an old man’s beard. Any other time the abbess might have agreed with his prudence, but several of the sisters had broken out in a high fever and painful rash, and their limited supplies of medicine had run perilously low.

The friar had capitulated, but not gracefully, for his feet had moved so quickly on the road Marienne’s shorter strides had been hard pressed to keep his pace. She looked over at him and once more marvelled to herself how unlike a friar he appeared. Over the past decade he had never once dropped his guard or taken any manner of precaution for granted. Nor had he allowed any of his knightly skills to wane. He was lean and hard, his limbs were like iron from living off the land. Where he might have missed the power of a destrier beneath him, he more than made up for the lack in sheer strength and stamina. He could run for miles without taking a heavy breath. He could and did practice for hours with sword, mace, and stave with hardly a trace of sweat on his brow to show for it.

Like Marienne, he had taken no formal vows with the church, nor was he inclined to offer a prayer in lieu of a cut from his sword should his back come against a wall. He was one of the deadliest swordsmen in Sherwood and had his monk’s robes specially fashioned to afford access to the weapon he always wore strapped to his waist. He had earned the familiar name Tuck because of the assortment of knives, daggers, and blades he kept hidden in various folds and pockets of his garments, and this was just as well, because his real name, should it ever slip from an unguarded tongue, would have brought the wrath of the crown down on all their heads.

With the forest filling with outlaws, and those outlaws becoming bolder in their actions against the sheriff and his henchmen, it was becoming more difficult to remain anonymous. Luckily they all had secrets to keep, and the quickest way to earn a blade across the throat was to ask too many questions or offer up too much unwanted information. The outlaws of Sherwood were successful because no one man knew too much about another. Their leader insisted on keeping it that way, preferring to use nicknames rather than proper surnames, or names that identified them by skill, like Derwint the Fletcher or Edgar the Cobbler. They neither made nor passed judgment on any member of the band, and strangely enough, because loyalty and trust were not demanded, they were given freely and fiercely, even unto death.

“Why do you keep looking over your shoulder?” Marienne asked, huffing a bit as they started up an incline. “Is there someone following us?”

“I think there may be an excess of vermin in the woods today, aye. You will, of course, oblige me by running whither I send you if I deem their presence to become too annoying?”

“I would sooner not have to run anywhere at all today.” She sighed, then added shyly, “I would rather find a soft glade and a cool stream and practice the lessons you were teaching me.”

Haste had made the short hairs at her temple curl damply against her skin and put a rosy blush in her cheeks. She was at the far end of three and twenty but looked much younger, and her simple wool tunic could not completely conceal the ripe curves of the body beneath. On several occasions, Tuck had caught himself looking longer and harder than he should, most recently when he had taken the foolish notion into his head to teach her how to swim. It had happened all very innocently, for she had fallen off a cracked log and surprised him by panicking in water that was scarcely over her shoulders. He had taught her then and there how to make a few strokes and hold herself up by kicking and paddling, but the sheer act of supporting her wet and shapely body had left: his own aching in ways that made him flush with hot guilt every time he thought of it. To repeat the exercise any time soon would have tested the fortitude of a real monk.

Avoiding her gaze, he frowned over his shoulder again, unable to rid himself of the feeling he should have been more insistent that morning with the abbess.

“I am as quick on my feet as you are, good friar,” she said, not knowing where his thoughts had drifted, but drawing his eyes back. “And if you have another sword tucked beneath your cassock, I will prove I can be just as good at ridding the forest of vermin.”

“I know full well your skill with blade and bow,” he said grimly. “And those were lessons I should never have been extorted into teaching you.”

“They have come in handy on more than one occasion,” she reminded him, “when you were not there to watch over the abbey like a tarnished archangel.”

Tuck’s tawny hair caught a glint of sunlight and for a moment resembled threads of pure gold. His skin was weathered a healthy bronze, and, not for the first time, Marienne found herself smiling at the comparison.

“You should never have strayed outside the abbey walls,” he grumbled, “regardless how many of the sisters went with you, how sunny a day it was, or how ripe the berries were for picking. You were lucky it was just two errant knights looking to do a little mischief in the grass.”

“Well, they spent the rest of the day looking for the arrowheads I buried in their hides.”

Tuck started to give his head a rueful shake but froze when he detected a faint stirring in the sea of ferns that grew alongside the road. They had crested the hill and started on their way down and for the moment, the view of the road behind them was blocked from sight.

His footsteps slowed measurably.

Twenty feet ahead, the road took a sharp turn to the left, the gully too thick with evergreens to see what lay beyond. It was, he realized at once, the perfect spot for an ambush, with blind spots ahead and behind. He was at a further disadvantage, having a canvas-wrapped parcel cradled under each arm. As casually as he could, he transferred the one to free his sword arm.

“Marienne—”

The whisper barely left his lips when the impatient nicker of a horse justified the scratching on his neck. The unmistakable clank of armour followed close by, and with sudden certainty he knew they had been caught in a trap. He did not have to see the row of gleaming steel helmets that rose above the crest of underbrush, nor did he have to hear the muffled command and subsequent pounding of hoof beats on the beaten earth ahead. A dozen or more horsemen had been waiting around the bend in the road, the same number of foot soldiers, armed with crossbows, had been secreted in the bushes waiting to cut off their escape. Even as he whirled around, dropping his packages to the road, the two lines of soldiers closed in behind them like a pincer.

Marienne’s hand went to her waist and found the hilt of the dagger she wore sheathed in her belt. Beside her, Tuck had his sword in his hand and was turning in a slow, shocked circle, his teeth bared over a steady stream of curses.

The mounted knights drew to a halt behind the ring of foot soldiers. They wore plain gray tunics devoid of any crests or blazons. They carried no pennons, no shields embossed with identifiable markings. Their mail was made of the finest Damascene steel, polished to a professional gleam. The horses were huge, well fed, well blooded, and, to judge by the utter lack of movement, exceptionally well trained.

They had the hardened look of mercenaries about them, and Tuck’s grip tightened on his sword, raising the point to chest level, wondering if this was Gisbourne’s work … or the king’s.

Before he could divine any answer, one of them nudged his warhorse forward a few paces, his way of announcing himself as the leader. For all of two full minutes he said nothing. Dark, keen eyes glittered out from behind the steel nasal of his helm, giving Marienne but a cursory inspection before settling intently upon Tuck.

“Of all the remarkable sights we have encountered of late”—his voice was a low, sinister rasp—“that of a monk wielding a fine Toledo blade must needs rank as one of the oddest.”

“Try your hand at taking it from me,” Tuck said bluntly, “and you might rethink the ranking.”

“Boastful words, Friar,” the knight hissed. “And ones that will likely require testing some time in the near future. For the moment, however, you might want to simply set the weapon aside instead.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because, as you can plainly see, I have twenty men with twenty fingers itchy to pull the trigger on twenty crossbows.”

Tuck’s sword wavered not an inch. “Who the devil are you?”

“Of more pressing interest, friend, is the question: Who the devil are you?”

“Obviously not who you think I am.”

“You deny you are a member of the band of outlaws who populate the forests of Sherwood?”

Tuck’s jaw clenched. “I am but a humble mendicant going about God’s business.”

The knight eyed the finely honed sword again. “Not so humble, I think, and judging by the number of robberies in these woods, not as much God’s business as that of the King of Sherwood.”

“The sword was a gift. I carry it for defense against those selfsame robbers you accuse me of knowing.”

“That is good,” the knight mused. “Very good.” He leaned forward with a soft creak of leather and crossed his arm over the frontispiece of his saddle. “And if I believed you, Priest, it would be even better.”

“What would it take to convince you?” Tuck asked tautly.

“More than you have to offer. Although if you persist in wasting my time”—the knight’s eyes slid over to rest on Marienne—“we may be pressed to seek some form of compensation.”

Tuck delayed another fraction of a moment, then lowered the tip of his sword.

The dark eyes returned. “Ahh. You concede the point.”

“Before I concede anything, I would call upon your honor as a knight to let the maid pass unharmed. She is but a simple child of God and carries medicines for the nuns at her convent.”

The knight weighed Tuck’s words against the pale, stricken look on Marienne’s face and agreed with a curt nod of his head.

“Let her pass,” he said to his men. “We can always find her again if we need her.”

Marienne, her skin the color of old wax, was conscious of Tuck drawing her down to retrieve the contents of one parcel that had split open.

“Do not spare a single breath getting back to the abbey.” His voice was raw with urgency, the words barely loud enough for her to understand. They came through bloodless, unmoving lips and frightened her more than any threat of rape or ravishment. “Lock and bar the gates. Let no one inside. No one, do you understand!”

Her eyes were as wide and dark as those of a doe facing a hunter’s arrow and Tuck knew what she was thinking. He was thinking it too. If they took him to Guy de Gisbourne and if the sheriff recognized his face …

He groaned and bowed his head. “If you do not hear from me in two days’ time,” he said tersely, wondering if he could even last that long under torture, “get word to Amboise. Tell them the Pearl may be in grave danger and needs their help.”