Outlaw Princess of Sherwood (7 page)

His courtesy felt false, overdone, excessive even by the standards to which Etty had been raised. It felt like mockery.

“Don't call me princess,” she told him. “Do I look like a princess to you?” Certainly she had all her teeth and no pockmarks on her skin, but if that made her a princess, then he was a prince, for he could say the same. But how could he call her princess when she had fleabites all over her arms, when her head itched with lice, when she was sitting there in deerskin boots and a green kirtle with a deerskin belt, with her hair pulled back in a thong?

Once again Beauregard reached for his hat as if to sweep it in a gallant gesture. “But you are the very princess of the wildwood,” he said.

This boy beauty had an answer for everything. Etty studied him, blinking, then glanced up toward Robin and Rowan, seeing the same doubt in both their faces that she felt in her own. There was something unrevealed about this Beauregard.

 

Far off in the forest a wagtail whistled. Robin turned his head, and Etty stood up, looking and listening. There came the sound of brush rustling, twigs breaking, distant at first but drawing nearer. With a commotion worthy of a rampaging lion, a tall, top-heavy form appeared, looking like a hunchback because of the load he carried—Etty could see Lionel, she realized, better than firelight allowed. A whisper of light was dawning in the sky. It was daybreak.

Far more quietly, a tall, green-clad outlaw strode into the clearing that encircled Robin's spreading oak. Little John, all towering seven feet of him. He gave Robin a nod to signify that all was well.

Stumbling up to Etty, Lionel eased his burden to the ground. There lay King Solon, glaring pale-eyed over the gag in his mouth, with his beard in a spiky mess and goose bumps on his bare, hairy legs. Etty stared. It was like encountering a strange animal she had never even heard of before. For just a moment she felt sorry for the poor creature, so scared and cold—but then her pity flared into anger. It was her father, and had he felt sorry for her when he had starved her? Had he felt sorry for her when he had sent her off to be married to an ugly old toad of a lord?

Did he love her? At all?

A loud groan sounded. Etty stiffened and looked to see who was hurt. Oh. No matter, it was just Lionel. “My back is broken,” he lamented, flopping full length on the ground. “That so-called king looks like a grasshopper, but he weighs like an ox.”

No one paid any attention, for Lionel lived to complain. They all stood in a circle around the captive, looking down at him. His arms were hairy, too, with goose bumps. Etty no longer noticed his glare, for she had focused instead on his smallclothes. They looked far from white, and needed mending. Imagine, a king with holey smalls.

“Well,” said Robin Hood after a while, “here's your prisoner, Etty, lass. Now what?”

W
ith all eyes upon her, Etty blinked at Robin Hood, feeling as if her brain had turned into mashed turnips. In the great oak spreading overhead, thrushes and whitethroats and wrens sang of sunrise and spring, nests and mating and bugs and fledglings. And the chaffinches wondered: What? What? What ho, what? they sang.
What, indeed?
Etty thought. Robin expected
her
to take charge?

True, she had very much taken charge till now . . . but she had not thought much beyond the capture. Her father lay trussed like a cooked goose at her feet, glaring up at her, and—

And staring back at him, Etty felt her muddled thoughts turn sharp and cold like splintered ice. Turning to Robin, she inquired sweetly, “Have we a cage? I would like to put him in a cage in his smalls and give him bread and water to eat. Let folk stare at him. Leave him there to spend his nights in the cold.”

Out of the tail of her eye she saw her father's glare widen into a startled stare. She ignored him.

Others were staring at her also. Beauregard, Rook, Lionel, Rowan, Robin. Etty realized they had never seen her truly angry—no, more: enraged. Yet she would not shout. She was too much her mother's daughter to rage aloud.

“No cage?” she went on just as cooly to Robin. “Very well, we shall chain him to a tree instead. Shackles on his hands and shackles on his bare ankles. But let us shave his beard first—”

“Etty, stop it,” said a gentle voice, Rowan's.

“Why? I am quite serious. We must shave his beard to let folk see what a sorry chin he has under it. Then—”

Rowan moved to stand before her, laying quiet hands on either side of her head.

“I don't want healing! Let me be.” Etty lifted her hands to push Rowan away. But in the next breath she felt—better, blast it all. Tension like a bowstring across her shoulders started to relax. She had not even noticed something buzzing like a thousand locusts in her mind until the noise eased into silence. Under Rowan's touch, intimations of peace bloomed in her heart. For a moment, Etty really felt the new-day sunshine warming her shoulders.

Rowan lifted her hands and faced her levelly, gesturing at her father. “You wish to be like him?” she asked.

“No!” Etty swallowed and spoke more calmly. “No. I don't. Toads take you, Rowan.”

The outlaw girl smiled as warm as the sunrise. “I'll get our guest a blanket,” she said. “He's cold.” She limped toward Robin's oak.

“Have your men unbind King Solon,” Etty told Robin in her normal tone, although wearily, “and let him warm himself by the fire, and give him something to eat.”

 

“My curse on all of you!” King Solon raged as the outlaws removed the gag from his mouth. “Get your hands off me, dirty churls!” as they seated him on a heap of soft doeskins at the guest's place of honor upon the mossy roots of the great oak, with the campfire near his feet. “A pox take you!” as they unbound his wrists and served him venison with mushroom gravy for breakfast.

Standing nearby, Etty turned her back to all this, feeling tired. Very tired. No wonder. She hadn't slept.

“Are you all right, lass?” Robin asked, walking up to her.

She nodded, wondering hazily what he meant. Why should she not be all right?

“Well, then, we need to think what to do next. May my yeomen rest, or must I keep them at the ready? How long will it take your father's retainers to come looking for him?”

“I don't know,” Etty admitted.

An unexpected voice spoke. “It will take them the better part of the day, if not longer.” Beauregard, seated on the ground with his booted feet thrust out, gestured with a hunk of bread in his slender white hand. “The men of our good King Solon, they are grumbling,” he said. “They have not been paid, and the food is poor. The captain is old, the sergeant challenges him at every turn, and the men do no more than they have to.”

Robin wheeled to peer at him. “How do you know all this, lad?”

“I heard and saw. Yesterday.”

Etty found herself wide-awake within a moment. “What has become of your Frankish accent?” she demanded.

A grin as bright and sudden as lightning flashed on his fine-boned face. His black eyes glinted with fun. “
Mes yeux,
mademoiselle,” he said. “
Merci beaucoup
for to remind me.”

“Please forget that she reminded you.” Robin eyed the page boy thoughtfully. “Master Beauregard—if that is indeed your name—why did the high king send you here?”

“Ah, it is just a small matter of taxes.” He waved his breakfast languidly. “King Solon has not paid them.”

“For that, you followed Solon
here
? To Sherwood Forest?”

“
Oui
, most assuredly.” Beauregard grinned again. “The better part of my task is to spy. King Solon is in much difficulty.”

Etty peered at Beauregard, feeling certain now that the stranger boy liked to rattle the bushes. He meant his foppish clothes and his so-called Frankish accent to annoy any yeomen who would judge him shallowly. Or perhaps he was actually mocking the dandies of the high king's Frankish court. He was a gadfly, with a kind of nerve new to Ettarde. Intent on him, she moved a few steps closer, so that she looked down at the top of his golden head.

“You have the high king's ear,” Robin was saying to Beauregard, “yet you would throw in your lot with outlaws? But you could have risen—”

“Beauregard,” Etty blurted, interrupting in her surprise, “your hair is as fair as flax, but the roots are raven black.”

The boy dropped his bread as his hands jerked up, trying to cover his head in the absence of his hat. His dark eyes widened, all their glitter gone, leaving only stark fear.

And Robin sucked in his breath with a hiss, stepping back as if he had seen an adder. “Guards!” he called sharply. Will Scathelock was already standing by. “Much, Rafe, John!”

“
Mon foi,
” faltered Beauregard, regaining some of his poise, “a simple potion turns the hair yellow to charm the ladies, what is the harm of that?”

Etty gawked. He had changed the color of his hair? She had never heard of such a thing. But still, as he had said, what harm—

“He's a black-haired blackguard,” said Will Scathelock, as harsh as flint. “He's one of the foul folk. A Wanderer.”

Etty stiffened as knowledge broke upon her, truth as sharp as glass shattering. That narrow face like a carving from—from somewhere ancient, Greece, Egypt—that head like a sleek cat's poised atop a fine neck, those winglike cheekbones, that elegant unbroken line of brow and nose . . .

“You are one of the accursed race,” Etty whispered, edging back, feeling the knowledge ripple up her back, clenching every muscle.

“Accursed! For what cause?” Beauregard rose, his black eyes flashing, all his foppery gone. “My race holds no land, makes no wars, sheds no blood. No man of my race holds any other man slave or serf or servant. You call us thieves? It is true we steal sometimes, to survive, but are you not also thieves, O outlaws?” He shot a level look that took in Will Scathelock, Robin, all of them.

“Silence.” Etty had never seen Robin so stern. “You have come here in disguise, to deceive me—”

“Have you not also gone about in disguise?”

Outlaws shouted with rage. Will drew his short sword. “How dare you! As if he were like you?”

Others cried out. “Bah! You sneaking villain!”

“You of the wicked race—”

“Bloody-handed—”

“Cradle robber—”

But Beauregard's flutelike voice pierced through them all. “You think we steal babies? Bah, what for? Who needs more?” He tossed his head, arrow-straight and defiant. “We steal gold, given a chance—but the greatest thieves of all, are they not the kings and so-called lords of
your
race? Stealing livelihood and soul from common folk, wresting maidens from their fathers?”

“Enough,” Robin commanded. He turned to Will and the others. “Will, sheathe your sword. Take him within.” Inside the oak, he meant. Its hollow could house a dozen outlaws in a huddle. Robin ordered, “Do not mistreat him, but guard him well, and tell him nothing.”

Etty watched Beauregard's proud, straight back, shoulders square under the crimson tunic, as they took him away. “I
liked
him,” she whispered, shuddering.

Robin let out a long breath. “Use your head, lass,” he told her gently enough, “not just your heart.”

E
tty knew she had to do it.

With a wavering feeling in her gut, but keeping her face calm, she walked up to the fire and seated herself facing her father. His breakfast, she noticed, lay beside him upon its trencher, untouched. Glaring wildly behind him, as if something might be sneaking up on him, he did not see her sit down almost near enough to touch.